


she rises like athena

by deathsweetqueen



Series: woman fierce [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anxiety Attacks, Bitter Tony Stark, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-untypical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Gen, Gender Issues, Genderbending, Genderswap, Hurt Tony Stark, Implied Use of Escort Services, Jewish Tony Stark, Latinx Tony Stark, Neurodivergent Tony Stark, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Touching, Pansexual Tony Stark, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Rule 63, Sexual Assault, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2019-10-24 21:29:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17711915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathsweetqueen/pseuds/deathsweetqueen
Summary: Those who were there say that Antonia Margaret Stark was born raging at the world. And somehow, she began to carry that rage with her always. She hid it, of course, because rage on a pretty face isn’t a pretty sight and people liked to deal with a pretty face, not an angry face. But it was in every smile, every look, every flutter of her eyelashes, every snap of her heels and every toss of her hair.It carried her through MIT; it carried her past funerals; it carried her through board meetings where those old men spent more time looking down her blouse rather than actually listening to what she was saying (the pigs).And now, it brought her to a cave in Afghanistan, at the feet of a pack of hungry, pathetic little men who want something from her. Theyalwayswant something from her.But she was made wilful and broken and intelligent as fuck, and the world can fucking burn, as far as she's concerned.





	1. (i)

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah, my fem!Tony au which I've been working on for around seven-eight months now is finally up. 
> 
> As you can tell, this isn't your family-friendly, Tony-is-a-girl au, and it does look at some unfortunate things that women face in this world. The first chapter is pretty mild, and I will warn very specifically in each chapter. But this one does contain some explicit sexual content involving Toni and Christine, so if femslash isn't your thing, back away slowly.
> 
> By the way, the title from this fic comes from Nikita Gill's poem, _Athena Girl_.
> 
> I hope everyone enjoys!

“Come on, Toni, throw the dice!”

Toni bites her lower lip in concentration and carefully pitches the dice onto the craps table.

“Six, jimmy hicks.”

Toni pumps her fist. “Yes! That’s what I’m talking about! We should stay till the morning.”

She looks at the crowd gathered around her expectantly.

They all cheer, just as she had predicted.

_Sheep._

“You are unbelievable.”

Toni grins and turns around.

Rhodey looks so put out that she knows she’s in a hell of a lot of trouble, but he looks so handsome in his dress blues that she has to reach out and pinch his cheek like he’s a five-year-old.

“Oh, no! I didn’t know they roped _you_ into this.” she pouts.

“Nobody roped me into anything!” Rhodey protests, huffing and swatting away her hand.

Toni hugs him, laughing. “I’m so sorry.”

“But they told me that if I presented you with the award, you'd be deeply honoured,” Rhodey says, snidely.

“Of course, I’d be deeply honoured,” Toni nudges him in the side. “It's you, that's great – _no_ , that’s fucking awesome, babe. So, when do we do it?”

Rhodey shoves a crystal figure into her hands. “It's right here. Here you go.”

Toni stares at it. It’s a gaudy thing.

“There it is. Well, that was easy.” Rhodey is still unhappy. Toni sighs. “I am so sorry,” she says, sincerely.

Rhodey sighed (it’s not the first time Toni has done this, and this won’t be the last). “Yeah, it’s okay,” he waves it off.

Toni is glad for her six-inch heels, because all she has to do is tip herself forwards just a little bit to kiss him on the cheek.

“You’re the best, sugarplum.”

“Yeah, I am, and don’t you forget it,” Rhodey warns.

Toni holds a hand to her heart and gasps loudly. “Such blasphemy. I won’t hear of it.”

“You look hot, by the way,” Rhodey admits, grudgingly.

Toni looks down at herself. She can barely see her feet through the tufts of her dusky blue dress, but she knows she looks hot. Her tattoo is bare, for all the world to see, the head of a monstrous-looking dragon with a jaw full of sharp, pointed teeth looming out of the back of her dress; she’s lacking jewelry and layers and layers of makeup and even her hair’s a bit of a hot mess by now, but she knows she looks gorgeous.

“I do, don’t I?” she waggles her eyes, with no small amount of arrogance.

Rhodey can’t help but laugh – it’s a hysterical thing. “I can’t believe you. You’re even dressed for it, for God’s sake.”

Toni shrugs. “I saw the craps’ table. I got distracted. It happens.”

Rhodey raises an eyebrow. “Only to _you_.”

Toni pouts, visibly. “Don’t hate me, Cabbage Patch. You know I’ll die if you hate me. I really am sorry.”

Rhodey rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”

Toni palms the heavy glass figurine. “Wow! Would you look at that? That's something else. I don't have any of those floating around,” she muses. She leans in. “How many people do you think I’d brain if I just threw it?”

Rhodey’s head slumps forward. “Can you please not start a casino fight? ‘Cause then you’ll just expect me to clean it up.”

“Bold words from the guy who trashed that bar in Boston in ’87,” Toni retorts through a red mouth and a smile.

Rhodey makes a disgruntled face. “You swore you’d never mention that again,” he hisses.

“When did you become so boring?” Toni drawls, disappointed. She waves her dice-ridden fist under his jaw. “Come on, babe, give me a hand, will you? Give me a little something-something.”

Rhodey rolls his eyes. “Throw the damn dice, Toni.”

Toni sighs. “So boring,” she comments. She turns to the scantily-dressed brunette who’s still fluttering her eyelashes like she’s a wind-up toy who just can’t stop. “Why don’t you give it a shot, honey?”

The girl sinks her teeth into her lower lip and stares at her through lidded eyes. She puckers her lips, in a way that begs Toni to consider the other ways her lips could be used (potentially accompanied with an invitation back to Toni’s luxury mansion overlooking the beach), and blows lightly on the dice.

“Okay, now, you,” Toni looks at Rhodey, expectantly.

Rhodey simply crosses his arms over his chest, unimpressed.

Toni looks like she’s seconds away from stomping on her feet. “Come on, honeybear,” she whines.

Rhodey knocks Toni’s hand out of his personal space, causing Toni to accidentally drop the dice onto the craps table.

“Whoops,” he mutters, unrepentant.

“There it is,” Toni exclaims, delighted. “Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes rolls! And...” She looks at the dealer, expectantly.

“Two craps. Line away.”

Rhodey grins at Toni, vindicated. “ _That's_ what happens,” he says, smugly.

Toni shrugs. “Worse things have happened. I think we're gonna be fine. Colour me up, William.”

Five minutes later, despite her many protests and insistence that he is _such a downer_ and to _go away ‘cause you’re harshing my buzz, sour patch_ , Rhodey is bodily dragging her from the craps table, citing that she needs to be in Afghanistan early tomorrow morning and a night of gambling isn’t exactly conducive to an early morning trans-Atlantic journey.

“This is where I exit,” Rhodey motions to the lift that will take him up to his room.

Toni gives the hotel lobby a disdainful look. “You know, you could just stay at the mansion,” she says, pointedly. “Standing room, amazing service, and the greatest leaps in engineering and technology known to anyone. Not to mention, the _pièce de résistance_ , _moi_.” She exaggeratedly waves her hand in her own direction.

Rhodey’s lips twitch. “While that does sound tempting, the Apogee Foundation paid for the room, babe. I’m gonna milk it for all it’s worth.”

Toni sighs, waving him off. “Such a downer. Bye, baby cakes.”

Happy follows her dutifully as she and Rhodey diverge towards the entrance.

“See, this is why people think we’re screwing!” Rhodey calls out after her.

Toni snorts. “You should be so lucky,” she retorts (even if she knows it’s really the other way around).

“Tomorrow, don't be late.”

Toni grimaces. “Yeah, you can count on it.”

She doesn’t turn her head. If she turns her head, Rhodey will know she’s completely and utterly faking it.

“I’m serious!”

_Damn._

“I know, I know, dad,” Toni mutters. She passes by an actor in full legionnaire armour, taking overdone photos with tourists who have clearly never been Las Vegas before, and shoves the Apogee into his startled hands. “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Go nuts.”

It’s a little chilly when she steps out of the hotel and she wishes she had brought a jacket to go with this dress. Happy rushes ahead of her to open the car door, so she can get inside first, even though she’s told him like fifteen times she can open her own damn doors. She gives him a little more leeway than any other person (read: man) in his situation, because she knows it doesn’t come from a place of condescension, rather than his genuine belief that it’s included in his job description as her driver – _poor thing_.

“Ms Stark! Excuse me, Ms Stark!”

Toni sighs. She turns around, only to be faced with an intrepid but proficient blonde, clutching a tape recorder like it’s her lifeline.

“Christine Everhart, Vanity Fair magazine. Can I ask you a couple of questions?” Christine stares her down.

Toni pastes on her flaky socialite smile: the one she knows simultaneously endears people to her and makes them want to kill her; the one she inherited from Maria Collins Carbonell, long before she needed a glass of wine to deal with her anymore; the one she practiced in the mirror for months when she was five until it came as easy as breathing, just so she could be used to maintain the charade that they were some happy Brady-Bunch-esque family, and pretend her father wasn’t a functioning alcoholic who spent whatever miniscule free time he had left to search the Atlantic for some dead super soldier.

But she is most certainly not bitter at all.

“Hi,” she greets like she’s excited.

“You've been called the Da Vinci of our time. What do you say to that?” Christine asks her, curiously.

Toni exhales, thoughtfully. “Absolutely ridiculous. I don't paint.”

“And what do you say to your other nickname? The Merchant of Death?”

Christine’s eyes are like sharp points, watching for the moment where her face will crack open.

_Too bad, honey, not happening._

“I actually quite like that one,” she muses. “It’s very… _monumental_ , wouldn’t you say?”

Christine is as unimpressed as ever.

“Let me guess, Berkeley?” Toni asks, dryly.

Christine grits her teeth. “Brown, actually.”

“Well, Ms Brown,” Toni openly mocks her. “It's an imperfect world, but it's the only one we've got. I guarantee you, the day weapons are no longer needed to keep the peace, I'll start making bricks and beams for baby hospitals.”

Christine raises an eyebrow. “Rehearse that much?”

Toni grins just to fuck with her. “Every night in front of the mirror before bedtime.”

“I can see that.”

“I could show you first-hand?” Toni offers.

Honestly, she’s not all that interested (she doesn’t normally fuck people who’d put a knife in her throat if they could) – she just wants to see what Christine will do.

“All I want is a serious answer.”

Toni’s lip curls. “You want a serious answer? Fine. I think you come after me, because it’s easier to criticise the one female CEO of a weapons manufacturing company than attack all those assholes on the Hill that think it’s a good idea to invade another country. I’m just doing business.” 

Christine crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re saying I’m sexist?” she asks, incredulously.

“I’m saying anti-capitalism is all the rage nowadays. Guns don’t kill people, sweetheart; _people_ kill people. Why don’t you redirect your anger at someone a little more culpable than I am?”

“You’re telling me _you’re_ an innocent vendor of goods and the big bad government is to blame?” Christine scoffs. “I think your privilege is distorting your view of reality, Ms Stark.”

“Firstly, I’m a Jewish-Latina pansexual genius businesswoman in a world that prioritises brawn over brain, men over women, white over non-white, and heterosexuality over anything else; how much privilege do you really think I have?” Toni retorts. “Secondly, I have _never_ , in my life, lobbied the United States government to start or continue a war, just so I could peddle my weapons and get rich, and I take exception to that. I make it a point to stay _away_ from politics, just so I don’t have to deal with any conflicts of interest. Thirdly, look – Christine, was it? – if it weren’t me making the weapons, it’d just be someone else. My weapons actually keep our soldiers and military personnel safe,” Toni snaps. “Fourthly, do you plan to report on the millions we've saved by advancing medical technology or kept from starvation with our intellicrops?”

Christine purses her lips.

Toni knows she has her, and smiles. “No, of course not. Why would you? That kind of news doesn’t sell, does it?” She leans in, enjoying the way the muscles tighten in Christine’s face like she’d lunge for her and start ripping her hair out of the roots if she could. “Now, who’s the sellout?”

Christine makes a loud noise of disgust. “Do you ever lose an hour of sleep your whole life?”

Toni gives her the once-over, just so Christine knows what she wants from her. “I’d be prepared to lose a few with you.”

* * *

Christine’s the type to play for dominance, but Toni has been doing this for a long time.

So, when the blonde tries to pin her wrists down, she uses a move Jarvis taught her a long time ago (simultaneously praying for him to forgive her for bringing him into her sex games, however indirectly) and flips them over such that she’s crouching over Christine and holding down her arms.

It’s been a long time since someone got the better of her in bed.

“You are such a control freak,” Christine hisses.

Toni snorts. “Look who’s talking,” she sighs. “Everhart, we can do this one of two ways. One, you let me take care of everything and I promise you will have the best orgasms of your fucking life. Or two, we have a pointless pissing match and _both_ of us go unsatisfied and disappointed. Now, which would you prefer?”

Christine narrows her eyes. “You’re pretty sure of yourself.”

Toni runs her eyes down miles of milk-smooth skin and smiles, slowly and deliberately, running a pink tongue over a red lip and watching as Christine’s eyes are automatically drawn to the motion. She splays her hands across the inside of Christine’s thighs and opens out her legs. She props the other woman’s hips in her lap and thumbs the crease between her thigh and pelvic bone.

“Ready?” she taunts.

Christine grits her teeth. “I thought you promised me the _best orgasms of my fucking life_?” she retorts.

Toni tuts. “Would it kill you to have some patience?”

Christine folds her hands behind her head. “I’d have patience if I got what I came here for.”

Toni rolls her eyes. “Everhart, do me a favour: shut the hell up and enjoy the ride.”

Christine opens her mouth to bark something at her, but she loses speech altogether when Toni lifts her hips in the air and licks a stripe across her cunt.

* * *

“J, give me the exploded view,” Toni murmurs absentmindedly.

“The compression in cylinder three appears to be low, Miss Antonia,” JARVIS tells her.

“Log that,” she informs him.

The roar of her music turns down to a volume that she can barely hear, and she turns around to see Pepper letting herself into the workshop (she’s beginning to regret giving other people a code to her safe space, but it was a deal she made with Rhodey after her last three-day inventing binge and Pepper had freaked out so hard she almost called emergency services).

“Please don’t turn down my music,” she tells Pepper as politely she can be.

Pepper ignores her. “You’re supposed to be halfway across the world now.”

“I’m aware of that,” Toni retorts. “And again, please don’t turn down my music.”

Pepper rolls her eyes. “I can’t have a serious conversation with you if AC/DC is actively removing my ability to hear.”

“Firstly, that was Suicidal Tendencies, not AC/DC. Get your facts right. Secondly, Pepper, I can’t stress this enough, but don’t turn down my fucking music,” Toni snaps.

“Fine,” Pepper flings back.

“ _Thank you_ ,” Toni sighs. “You know, sometimes, you just suck at listening.”

Pepper’s eyes go comically wide. “ _I_ suck at listening?”

“Yes,” Toni insists.

“ _I_ suck at listening? Are you _kidding_ me?” Pepper demands.

Toni rolls her eyes and turns back to the engine. “How’d she take it?”

Pepper gives her a withering look. “Like a champ.” She pauses, closing her eyes as if she questions the sense of her asking her next question, but it’s like a train wreck and she just can’t stop herself. “I thought you were strictly-escort-service nowadays?”

“I am,” Toni concedes. “But she pissed me off.”

Pepper grimaces. “Well, if there ever was a reason to have a one-night stand,” she mutters under her breath.

Toni waves her wrench in Pepper’s direction. “Pepper, honey, you’re way too uptight. You need to get laid, like pronto.”

Pepper raises an eyebrow. “You know, some would call this a hostile work environment.”

“Would _you_?” Toni raises an eyebrow.

Pepper sighs, long-sufferingly. “Why are you still here?” she demands.

“Why are you trying to hustle me out of here?” Toni puts her hands on her hips.

“Your flight was scheduled to leave an hour and a half ago,” Pepper points out.

Toni raises an eyebrow. “That's funny, I thought with it being my plane and all, that it would just wait for me to get there,” she says, dryly.

Pepper tucks a stray lock of strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear and looks down at the files in her arms.

“Toni, I need to speak to you about a couple things before I get you out of the door.”

“Now you’re just contradicting yourself. I thought you wanted me out of here?” Toni points out. “And doesn't it kind of defeat the whole purpose of having your own plane if it departs before you arrive?” she muses out loud.

Pepper ignores her stream of consciousness. “Larry called. He's got another buyer for the Jackson Pollock in the wings. Do you want it? Yes or no.”

Toni doesn’t even pretend to think it through. “Is it a good representation of his spring period?”

Pepper’s brow furrowed. “No. The Springs was actually the neighbourhood in East Hampton where he lived and worked, not ‘spring’ like the season,” she explains.

Toni fiddles with the cylinder, only half-listening. “Pepper, I don’t really care. So?” she pushes.

Pepper knows her well enough to understand her monosyllable expectations.

“I think it's a fair example. I think it's incredibly overpriced,” Pepper amends.

Toni pauses. “I need it,” she says simply.

Pepper makes a sound of protest.

“Buy it. Store it.”

Pepper takes a deep breath. “Okay. The MIT commencement speech-”

“-is in June. Please don't harangue me about stuff that’s like way, way, down...”

“They're haranguing me, so I'm gonna say yes.”

“Deflect it and absorb it. Don't transmit it back to me,” Toni argues.

Pepper shoves a wad of papers into Toni’s arms. “I need you to sign this before you get on the plane.”

Toni rolls her eyes and holds out her hand, expectantly, in which Pepper drops a pen. She skims over the contract briefly, recalling the shipment she had approved a few days ago. She signs her name with a flourish where it indicates her name and hands the document back to Pepper, along with the pen.

Pepper sighs. “Please tell me you’re going now?”

“Fine,” Toni huffs. “But only because I’m done here; not because you want me to. Got it!” She points her wrench at Pepper, warningly. She jumps off the table and makes for the door, blowing a kiss to the three bots playing in the corner. “Mama will be back soon, babies. Don’t miss me too much.”

DUM-E chatters something in robot talk and waves his arm in her direction.

Her heart melts.

_Oy, I’m going soft._

“J, keep an eye on them. No parties,” Toni warns.

“I will attempt to curb their mischief to the best of my abilities, Miss Antonia,” JARVIS replies, dryly.

“Such sass, J-baby,” Toni laments. “I have no idea where you get that from.”

“Are you absolutely certain, miss?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Very well. Then, I am content to follow you in your delusion.”

“You know, I think the most stable relationship you have is with your AI,” Pepper comments.

“That’s how I roll,” Toni mutters. “And besides, who needs _real_ people? Real people suck.”

“Wow, thanks,” Peppers says, sarcastically.

“Yeah, but you’re not really _real_ people, are you? You’re one of _my_ people. That’s very different,” Toni reasons (frankly, it makes a lot of sense to her; how is it her fault if no one else gets it?).

“Does being one of ‘your’ people come with a pay raise?” Pepper asks without missing a beat.

“Oh, I’m sorry, the $4000 you spent on that blue dress wasn’t enough of a raise?” Toni raises an eyebrow.

Pepper grimaces.

“Yes, I do look at my bank statements, Ms Potts,” Toni brags.

“Well, we learn something new every day,” Pepper murmurs under her breath.

“Don’t be so bitter, dear. Knowledge is good.” Toni stops in the doorway to her workshop, turning her head and sending Pepper a wicked smirk. “Oh, and you know, if you want to make use of my standing arrangement with Marcella, I’d be okay with that. Call it an _extra_ birthday present between girlfriends.”

She runs up the stairs before Pepper can throw her shoe at her or something.

“I’m going on a vacation after you come back!” Pepper screams after her. “And you’re paying!”

Toni cackles to herself.

* * *

It’s a bit of a thing with her, but she can’t help but overtake Happy on the road to the airstrip where her jet is located. Her Audi R8 is beautiful and deserves to be treated like it’s beautiful, so she harbours no regret when she has to wait a couple of minutes for Happy to catch up in her Rolls Royce.

She beams at him when he jumps out of the car, making his way to the boot to grab her luggage and garment bag so she can change out of her workshop chic into something a little more presentable for a weapons demonstration in an Afghanistan military base.

“You're good. I thought I lost you back there,” Toni can’t help but tease.

“You did, ma’am. I had to cut across Mulholland,” Happy grins back at her.

She slings the Louis Vuitton duffle across one shoulder and takes the garment bag in the other hand.

“The Hermes or the Prada, miss?” Happy asks.

“The Hermes, I think,” Toni tells him. “These military types seem like they’ll appreciate the austerity of my fashion choices.”

She manages to slip the handles of her bag onto one of her wrists (Happy doesn’t offer to carry them in for her, because he tried it once, when he first started working for her, and he’s regretted it ever since) and strides over to the airstair leading to her jet. Rhodey is waiting for her at the top, in his dress blues, his arms folded across his wide chest and looking down on her with a stern expression.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he demands.

“What?” Toni asks, innocently.

“Three hours,” Rhodey says, slowly, as if that explains everything.

To be fair, in his defence, if it were anyone else standing on the other end of that conversation, it would.

But it’s Toni, after all, and she’s made a career out of making people wait for her (frankly, she’s been on the other end before and she got nothing for it, so it’s better this way).

“I got caught doing a piece for Vanity Fair,” Toni says, blithely, shoving her luggage into his arms as she pushes past him into the jet.

“For three hours. For three hours, you got me standing here,” Rhodey snaps after her.

“Well, I’m waiting on you now,” Toni points out. “Let's go. Come on.” She looks at the crew who are waiting for her to give the go-ahead. “Wheels up! Rock and roll!”

* * *

Toni sighs, finishing skimming through her emails.

_Obie wants me to cheap out on the milling machine. But we don’t even know anything about this company and I’m not going to pay through my teeth for some schmuck to make some second-rate machine that’ll make second-rate guns that’ll just get soldiers killed. I’ll just make it myself. But I’d have to extend my forecasts for the new Modular Tactical Vests for at least six months._

_I’ll need Pepper to send me the workup on that factory in Pennsylvania._

_Maybe I should just make the lathe too. And the factory will need a vibration isolator and a cold forming press too. Oh, hell, I might as well just make it all._

_But the Marine Corp may actually kill me. Nah, they need me too much._

_Man, it’s good to be indispensable._

Toni looks up, only to find Rhodey stubbornly looking at some file and avoiding her gaze.

“What are you reading, platypus?” Toni asks, curiously.

“Nothing,” Rhodey replies, curtly.

Toni’s shoulders slump. “Come on, sour patch. Don’t be mad,” she urges.

Rhodey gives her a fake smile (not as good as hers, but good enough – he’s learnt her ways well). “I told you, I’m not mad. I'm indifferent, okay?”

“I said I was sorry,” Toni moans.

“Good morning, Ms Stark,” A stewardess looks at her with hearts in her eyes.

“You don't need to apologise to me,” Rhodey mutters. “I’m just your man.”

“Hi,” Toni winks at the stewardess. “Hi. I told him I was sorry, but he...”

“I’m just indifferent right now,” Rhodey continues.

“Hot towel?”

The stewardess either is completely lost as to what is going on between Rhodey and Toni in front of her, or so committed to getting her job done that she’s content to ignore the tension.

“Hot towel?”

“You don't respect yourself, so I know you don't respect me,” Rhodey says, insolently.

Toni sighs. “Now you’re just being passive-aggressive. I respect you. You _know_ I respect you, honeybear.”

“I'm just your babysitter. So, when you need your diaper changed...” Rhodey looks up at the stewardess as she hands him a coiled, damp towel. “Thank you.” He returns to glaring at Toni. “Let me know and I'll get you a bottle, okay?”

Toni ignores him. “Hey! Heat up the sake, will you?” She gives Rhodey a belligerent smile. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“No,” Rhodey immediately protests. “I'm not talking...” He clears his throat. “We're not drinking. We're working right now.”

“You can't have sashimi without sake,” Toni protests.

“You are constitutionally incapable of being responsible,” Rhodey snaps.

There’s an urge to bite back ( _it’s not like I’ve run a fucking Fortune 500 company since I was 21 years old_ ; _it’s not like I’ve singlehandedly been responsible for at least 87% of Stark Industries’ gross revenue since I started working there; it’s not like I’m the one making the body armour and weapons that keep your boys in the Air Force and the Army and the Marine Corps fucking alive_ ; _but, hey, if you want to call that being constitutionally incapable of being responsible, you fucking do you_ ).

But it’s Rhodey, after all, and she’s incapable of lashing out at him. She wouldn’t be the Antonia Margaret Stark she is today if a gorgeous-grinned, guileless nineteen-year-old James Rupert Rhodes hadn’t asked her (tiny, terrified, false-confident and perpetually-lonely that she had been), if she wanted to be his lab partner in Mechanics and Materials I – frankly, she had been convinced for that whole first week that he was only screwing with her because no one, _not ever_ , had wanted to be the freaky genius fourteen-year-old’s lab partner.

But he had, and she thinks she’ll die loving him for it.

So, she can stomach her affront for him.

Toni rolls her eyes. “Hopefully the sake’ll dislodge that stick from your arse,” she retorts.

Rhodey scowls.

The stewardess brings around a small opaque glass bottle. “Hot sake?” she offers.

“Yes, two, please,” Toni agrees.

“No. I'm not drinking. I don't want any,” Rhodey insists.

Toni is pleasantly vindicated when not half an hour later, he is utterly captivated by the sway of the stewardess’ hips as they dance around the poles, their shirts tied in a knot just under their breasts, baring their taut stomachs.

Toni is not that interested, if she’s being honest. Instead, she’s staring at the ceiling, thinking about the specs for the new body armour and where she’ll have to source the materials to build the machinery for the Pennsylvania factory, only half-listening to Rhodey’s diatribe in her ear.

“That's what I'm talking about,” Rhodey blathers on. “When I get up in the morning and I'm putting on my uniform, you know what I recognise? I see in that mirror that every person that's got this uniform on got my back!” He insists.

Drunk Rhodey is adorable, but Patronising Rhodey is not fun at all, and she tries very hard to tune him out.

Toni sighs. “Hey, you know what? I'm not like you. I'm not cut out...”

“No, no,” Rhodey pats her on the leg, fondly. “You don't have to be like me! But you're more than what you are.”

Toni turns her head and blinks at him. “Can you excuse me if I'm a bit distracted here?”

“No!” Rhodey barks. “You can't be distracted right now! Listen to me!”

Toni groans and lets her head fall back against couch.

_Oy, this trip is going to last forever._


	2. (ii)

Toni finishes changing her clothes into something a little more appropriate for a weapons presentation in front of the military, while Rhodey handles all the paperwork she wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole if she were given another choice.

She touches up her makeup in the mirror one last time, making sure that her lipstick isn’t smudged beyond the lines of her mouth and her mascara hasn’t already left black specks on her unblemished eyelids.

She blows out a frustrated breath through her teeth and checks her outfit once more. Her slim-fitting, long-sleeved black top, subtly exposing enough of her dark olive skin through the keyhole neckline, is tucked into taupe-checked tailored pants which end just an inch or two above her ankles. She’s taller now, due to her black loafer heels that put her at around six feet tall, which means that stuffy military types will find it very, _very_ hard to make her feel small, just so they can be proven right that there should be a _man_ in her place (as if she is some soft creature to be kept at home; as if she has ever looked upon any man as her equal in anything). 

When she saunters down the staircase, the general in charge of the base is waiting for her, with Rhodey by his side.

“General,” she greets with her trademark charming smile that makes men blush like they’re twelve years old and prone to spontaneous crushing all over again.

“Welcome, Ms Stark,” the general inclines his head. “We look forward to your weapons presentation.”

She looks at him through her eyelashes. “Why, thank you. It’s good to be here.”

The general is clearly affected, and he has to clear his throat, a sudden tinge of red colouring his cheekbones.

Toni considers that win and barely resists the urge to pump her fist.

The general leads them to a convoy of jeeps that will take them to the site where they want her to conduct her presentation (she doubts it would be conducive to good diplomatic relations if the Taliban were to see missiles firing from a United States military base). Once they reach their destination and Toni climbs out of her vehicle, she slides her hand inside Rhodey’s arm, thumbing the inside of his elbow back and forth, as she’s escorted to the site where they want her to conduct her presentation.

“You look good, babe,” Rhodey nudges her hip with his. “Like you’re ready to conquer the world.”

Toni waggles her eyebrows. “Thanks, buttercup. You want to be my second-in-command?”

Rhodey narrows his eyes. “You gonna pay me?”

Toni holds a hand to her heart. “Are you saying that your allegiance to me is based on monetary compensation?” she asks, mock-hurt.

Despite her teasing tone, there’s a grain of truth in her words and there’s a part of her that needs to know what his answer is – she refuses to believe that he’s been taking her for a ride for more than two decades because that does _not_ make any sense.

Rhodey snorts. “Babe, if my allegiance to you was based on money, I wouldn’t still be paying half the bill when we go out after knowing you for twenty-four years.”

Toni grimaces. “Fair enough,” she concedes.

“You ready for this?” Rhodey asks, curiously, cocking his head at the group of soldiers they were approaching.

Toni scoffs. “Oh, please, I wouldn’t be surprised if the half the men are imagining me straddling that missile without any clothes on or getting myself off, as opposed to _actually_ listening to what I have to say. I’m an illusion to them. I make weapons _sexy_ , _hot_ , _appealing_. I’m like the weather girl of weapons’ production.”

Rhodey screws up his face. “Bad mental image, Toni,” he says, horrified at the prospect.

“They’ll probably add it to their highlight reel and jerk off to it too, later,” she adds, just to fuck with him.

“Toni!” he whines.

Toni rolls her eyes. “Don’t be such a prude, honeybear,” she hums and sends him a sly smile out of the corner of her eyes.

“Seriously, though,” Rhodey pushes.

“Sugarplum,” Toni sighs. “I have to work _twice_ as hard, be _twice_  as good,” her voice goes thick with venom. “Just to be considered _half_ of any man in my place. Here, in _this_ world, it makes everything I do so much harder than it should be.” 

Rhodey looks at her, thoughtfully. “You know you’re not half of _anything_ to me, right? You’ve always been the real deal.”

Toni swells with emotion. “You’re always so sweet to me, honeybear,” she teases.

Rhodey chuckles. “Good luck with the presentation.”

Toni tosses her hair back and gives him a devastating look. “When have I ever needed luck?” she teases.

Rhodey rolls his eyes (she’s beginning to think he needs to do that at least once a day when he’s around her or his eyes might just fall out of their sockets). “Just go,” he says, long-sufferingly.

Toni blows him a visible kiss, much to Rhodey’s embarrassment and the interest of the soldiers watching their interaction, and marches, past the general and other commanders are waiting for her, to where her Jericho is located, taking her place a good hundred feet away from the missile.

The soldiers are all chatting amongst themselves, either uninterested that she’s ready to begin her presentation or assuming that she’ll wait until they’re done with their morning gab-fest.

She clears her throat.

They don’t stop talking.

_Fuck this._

She taps something into her phone and a high-pitched whistle rings through the air from the speakers. The soldiers jump in their skins and their heads all swivel to where she is tapping her foot, unimpressed.

“I’m just going to assume you’re all done shooting the breeze, if you don’t mind, of course,” Toni says, dryly, and watches in amusement as a number of the soldiers, including the commanders ( _good_ ), shift on their two feet in embarrassment. “I could start if you’re all ready? I mean, it’s not like I just flew twenty-two hours across the Atlantic Ocean so that I could show you some respect by making this presentation in person or anything.”

 _They wouldn’t be doing this if I were a man_ , she thinks bitterly.

 _You have to work twice as hard, be twice as good, Antonia, to get half of what they get,_ her father had told her time and time again (he had wanted her to be ready, almost pitying for the injustice he knew she would have to face).

She sees Rhodey’s mouth stretch into a broad but brief grin, and pride blossoms inside her (it’s always good to be reminded that Rhodey has her back like he always has).

“Now, is it better to be feared or respected?” Toni drawls, cocking her hip dramatically. She smiles, showing her white teeth. “I say, is it too much to ask for both? With that in mind, I humbly present the crown jewel of Stark Industries’ Freedom Line. It's the first missile system to incorporate our proprietary repulsor technology.”

Toni presses a button on the remote for the Jericho, which hums and shifts inside its chamber.

“They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire _once_ ,” Toni declares, sharply. “That’s how Dad did it. That’s how America does it. And it's worked out pretty well _so far_.” She points out. She takes a deep breath. “Find an excuse to let one of these off the chain, and I personally guarantee you the bad guys won't even want to come out of their caves.” She promises.

She raises her remote such that her audience can see exactly what she’s doing.

“For your consideration, the Jericho,” she says, lightly.

She presses the button and watches the faces in front of her go slack in awe as the missile launches, crashing into the mountains behind her with a tremendous resonance. The reverberation sends smoke and dust and gravel flying through the air, reaching even the soldiers at their back of the congregation. They all flinch, covering themselves from the prick of the grime that floats around them, while Toni simply stands there, immune to the sting, her eyes wide open.

_Fucking weaklings._

She strides over to where the cases upon cases of missiles are sitting, her hips swaying, and opens one of them, which hisses sharply. She bats her hand through the cold fog to get her hands on the decanter of Laphroaig Quarter Cask casually sitting inside. She pours herself a glass and takes a wistful sip, letting the general and his men come to their own conclusions about her missile.

“I'll be throwing one of these in with every purchase of five-hundred million or more. To peace!” she tips her tumbler in the air, scathingly.

Her phone chimes and she reaches for it, pursing her lips when she sees _Obie_ flash across the screen. She sighs and answers the call.

“ _Toni_.”

Obadiah’s face appears on her screen, where he’s lying in bed on his side with his sheets coming up to his broad shoulders.

She softens inwardly and gives him one of her genuine smiles (he’s one of the few that’s earned her smiles).

“Obie, what are you doing up?” she asks, gently.

“ _I couldn’t sleep till I found out how it went. How’d it go?_ ” Obadiah demands.

“It went great,” Toni smiles, lacklustre. “Looks like it's gonna be an early Christmas.” She gives him a thumbs-up.

“ _Hey! Way to go, baby girl! I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?_ ” Obadiah asks, warmly.

Toni beams down at the picture of him on her phone and tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear, all shy-like, like she’s still five years old and Obadiah’s handing her a Rubik’s Cube, which she promptly solves in just over three seconds, and he tosses her over his shoulder, roaring like a monster, while she squeals and pretends to get away.

“Why aren't you wearing those pyjamas I got you?” she teases.

Obadiah rolls his eyes. “ _Good night, Toni_.”

“Bye, Obie.”

She hangs up the phone, slipping it into one of the pockets in her slacks, and is led to a Humvee by another soldier escort, his face slightly obscured by the depth of his helmet and where his uniform is swathed thickly around his neck. She slips into Humvee, feet first, and not for the first time since she landed in Afghanistan, curses the social preconception that expects women to wear heels that could very well result in a broken neck if they were to trip – at least in her case, she had been wearing heels (albeit small ones until she was ten) since she was six years old and walking in them comes like second nature to her now.

She rests her forearm against the car window rim, just as Rhodey strides up to her.

“Hey, Toni,” he begins.

But Toni hasn’t quite forgiven his whole lecture routine in the jet.

“I’m sorry, this is the ‘fun-vee’,” she sniffs. “The ‘hum-drum-vee’ is back there.” She points to the Humvee parked behind the one she is in.

Rhodey narrows his eyes, but ultimately squeezes the hand that’s still resting where the window is lowered.

“Nice job,” he murmurs. “See you back at base.”

She reaches out and pinches his cheek, laughing when he bats her hand away, making a face at her.

* * *

Toni sighs and leans back against the seat, eyeing her escort – _her very silent escort_.

She can’t stand silence.

“I feel like you’re driving me to a court martial,” she complains. “This is crazy. What did I do? I feel like you're going to pull over and snuff me.” The soldiers remain silent. “What, you're not allowed to talk? Hey, Forrest!” She nudges the soldier sitting next to her (he was young, _so young_ ).

“We can talk, miss,” he replies.

“Oh,” Toni’s eyes widen. “I see. So, it’s personal?”

“No, you intimidate them,” the driver (the very _female_ driver) explains.

Toni makes a noise of surprise and leans forward. “Good God, you're a woman,” she says, delighted. “I honestly... I couldn't have called that.” She muses. “I mean, I'd apologise, but isn't that what we're going for here? I thought of you as a soldier first.” She points out.

“I’m an airman,” the soldier corrects.

“You have – actually – excellent bone structure, there,” Toni offers, shifting in her seat. “I’m honestly kind of having a hard time _not_ looking at you now. Would you like to have dinner with me tonight? Is that weird?”

The soldiers in the Humvee all laugh.

“Wait, am I like violating Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by asking you out? I’m sorry; I’ve been told I have like no filter whatsoever.” Toni pauses. “Or are you straight? Again, sorry, I don’t have much of a gaydar. I just see pretty people and I ask them out to dinner, or back to my place. Whichever works. I’m not really picky. I don’t have a place in Afghanistan, but my jet’s got a pretty bitching bedroom.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the soldier woman in the front smiling, while the rest chuckle.

“Come on, it's okay, laugh.”

The soldier in front of her opens his mouth to say something to her but closes it halfway through like he’s almost afraid to speak to her – she doesn’t know what it says about her, but frankly she likes the thought of being that daunting a figure.

The soldier ultimately finds the chutzpah to say what’s on his mind. “Ms Stark, I have a question to ask,” he stammers.

Toni raises an eyebrow (she wants to maintain her air of intimidation). “Yes?” she says, imperiously.

“Is it true you went twelve for twelve with last year’s Maxim cover models?” he asks, something akin to wonder colouring his voice.

Toni bites her lower lip, thoughtfully. “That is an excellent question. Yes and no,” she replies. “March and I had a scheduling conflict, but fortunately, the Christmas cover was twins. Anything else?” She looks around, expectantly.

The soldier next to her, the one she called Forrest, raises his hand.

She gives him a withering look. “You’re kidding me with the hand up, right?”

“Is it cool if I take a picture with you?” he asks, hopefully.

“Yes, it’s very cool,” Toni flutters her eyelashes.

He pulls a camera out of a pocket in his uniform and gives it to the soldier sitting opposite to Toni. He huddles closer to Toni, who leans in and gives a warmer smile than she would to any other camera.

“I don't want to see this on your Myspace page,” she jokes.

The soldier puts up a peace sign for the photo.

“Please, no gang signs,” Toni says, blithely, her face smooth and impassive. Her face cracks open into a wide grin when the boy’s drops his hand lamely. “No, throw it up. I'm kidding.” The boy smiles and puts up the peace sign again. “Yeah, peace. I love peace. I'd be out of a job with peace.” She muses.

Months later, Toni will be thinking of this moment and that boy’s smile immortalised in a photo that becomes dust in Afghanistan, because this is the moment when the entire convoy is attacked. Something unseen to her eye hits the vehicle in front of them, which turns into pieces in a rain of ash and fire. Toni presses herself against her side of the Humvee, curling forwards, as the sharp crack of gunshots and bangs barrage them on all sides, crashing into the ground surrounding them and the sides of the vehicle.

“What’s going on?” she demands. “Who’s attacking us?”

Clearly the soldiers ignore her.

“Contact left!”

“What have we got?” she snaps, but she gets no answer in return.

The driver she had been flirting with gets out of the Humvee to brawl with their attackers but barely manages to get both her feet on the dirty path their truck is on before she is abruptly shot in the head with a whetted hiss. Toni doesn’t flinch the way other women (hell, even other men) would in her position; this is not her first murder, nor her first death, but she feels a stab of grief for the woman she would’ve likely enjoyed conversing with during dinner or spending some satisfying time with in her bed.

She regrets not learning her name, at the very least.

The soldier who had been sitting opposite her curses under his breath when he sees his companion go down and fiddles with his gun, slipping out as well. He turns to the boy sitting beside Toni, his expression resolute.

“Jimmy, stay with Stark!”

Jimmy nods, raising his gun, aiming the barrel right out of the window, as he looks for any possible assailant at whom he may be able to fire.

“Stay down!” he tells her.

Toni rolls her eyes. “Give me a gun. I can help,” she insists.

But he doesn’t really believe her; all they think she’s good for is playing with wires; what she does will never be the same as a real war to them – little do they know that she’s been fighting a war since she was old enough to string two words together.

They think her weak, gentle, _soft_ , but she made her first gun when she was seven and Aunt Peggy thought it foolish that a maker of weapons couldn’t shoot one herself, and she’d been a dead shot by the time she was twelve.

The soldier who had been sitting opposite to her, firing his rifle just outside Toni’s side of the Humvee, keels over, and Jimmy goes white with anger and fear.

“Son of a bitch!”

He jumps out of the car, full of foolish bravado, much to Toni’s irritation (because boys are _always_ full of piss and vinegar, never thinking, reckless, _so stupid_ )

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Give me a fucking gun!” Toni shouts, frustrated.

She can’t die here. She _won’t_ die here.

“Stay here!” Jimmy insists.

When Jimmy turns around, he pitches forward as he is gunned down as well, the mortar shells leaving deep gouges in the side of the Humvee.

Ordinarily, Tony loves being proven right.

But today, there is no satisfaction.

He was a boy and now, he’s dead.

If she had any sort of maternal bone in her body or if she had been just a little more reckless during her teenage years, she may have even had a son his age.

She wonders what his mother will think when she puts his body in the ground.

Then, she remembers that there is no one to put her body in the ground.

Because Rhodey is there with her in this nightmare, and he’s the only one would have anything to say over her corpse.

_God, Rhodey is there with her._

_What if he’s already dead?_

No, if he were dead, she would know; she would’ve _felt_ it, in her bones; she would _know_.

He’s _not_ dead.

The onslaught around her is so loud, so deafening such that her hearing becomes smothered, in a way that makes her want to rub at her ears frantically until her ears pop. She fumbles for the door handle and trips her way out of the truck, regretting, not for the first time since she landed in Bagram, that her choice in outfit includes heels. She looks around; there’s a carbine lying on the ground beside the front tire (she ignores the corpse beside it) and she props the barrel up on the hood of the car.

She tries to fire it, spotting a shadow in the midst of all that smoke in the distance, from where the barrage is coming, but the rifle jams and she curses, tossing it aside. She slides back against the door and looks around, spotting Rhodey manning the machine gun mounted on top of the Humvee beside hers.

“Rhodey!” she screams. “Rhodey!”

Logically, she’s known that, as a soldier on active duty, he has always been in danger. But she’s always just been terrified of that call from his mother or sister; she never thought she’d actually be there to _watch_ him get hurt.

She’s completely helpless here and she hates it.

Rhodey turns his head and he starts just for a moment, seeing her there, like he completely forgot who had been in that first Humvee.

“Get down!” he shouts. “Get down, Toni!”

There’s a blast from right behind him and Rhodey’s forced to duck. For one brief moment, Toni’s heart stops, thinking he’s gone down, but then goes right back to firing the machine gun and her heart starts beating again. He turns back to her, swiping his hand insistently.

“Get down!”

She ducks a mortar shell careening through the air and lunges over a large rock, ducking behind it for cover. She pulls out her phone, dialling the number for the air base to call for help, to do _something_ , when a shell lands right next to her.

_Stark Industries._

_Oh, shit_.

Toni tries to scramble away, run before the blast hits her, because it _will_ hit her (she’s never made anything that didn’t do its damn job and do it well).

But she’s too slow.

The bomb blows up right in front of her and sends her flying through the air with a shriek. She hits the ground hard and pain lashes through her where her back hit the ground. Her skin is wet underneath her clothes and that just doesn’t make any sense, because she’s supposed to be wearing a bulletproof vest (the general had insisted).

Her chest hurts, like someone’s run her straight through, and it hurts to fucking _breathe_. She chokes something out, her throat tight, and fists her hands in the thin material of her top, tearing it open in the middle to expose the dark body armour stained a slick, warm red, the colour of blood.

Because it _is_ blood.

The pain swells and Toni gives into the darkness, with one last thought.

_Who’ll take care of JARVIS and the babies?_

* * *

She’s not as dead to the world as they think she is.

She wishes she is.

There is something ( _someone_ ) inside her.

She doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, but she knows there aren’t supposed to be hands inside her chest cavity, unspooling her insides until she is choking on blood. She struggles because _it fucking hurts and it’s just like Ty all over again_ and she promised herself a long time ago, when she was nineteen and splintered on the inside from yet another broken heart, lying on a gravel path, her head ringing from his blow to her cheekbone, while he screamed down at her and she cringed on the ground, that she’d _never_ let that happen to her again.

They hold her down, their hands meaty and damp with sweat, leaving marks of filth on her skin (she can _feel_ it and it makes her sick because people only touch her when she _wants_ them to). The sight, albeit hazy, of people looming over her ( _just like Ty did_ , she thinks) doesn’t make it easier and she cries out when whoever’s hand is inside her shifts.

The pain becomes blinding and thankfully, _mercifully_ , she goes back into the darkness.

 _The darkness is kinder_.

* * *

When she wakes up next, her vision is still fuzzy at the edges. Her mouth tastes like metal and there’s something dry coating the skin around it.

 _Blood_ , she realises.

She feels twice as heavy as she knows she weighs, when she tries to lift herself off the lumpy cot she is lying on top of. In the end, it doesn’t matter because when she tries to breathe, it feels like there is gravel in her lungs, scraping into tissue and membrane, like they’re going up against a cheese grater, and her sternum and ribcage feels like someone has gone inside and broken off piece by piece until she was cracked wide open.

Now, she wants to vomit ( _oh boy_ ).

She pants low, wheezy, short, _agonising_ gulps of air, staring up at what seems to be just rock, instead of an actual ceiling.

 _So, not the Hôtel Ritz Paris then_.

She turns on her side, seeing a jug of water sitting innocently on a small, makeshift bench beside her cot. She reaches for it, with a great deal of struggle getting her arms to work as they should, but her hand catches on wires and she knocks the jug down instead, the water sloshing onto and rippling across the dirty floor.

She wraps a chilly hand around the thicket of wires and tugs.

 _Fuck_ , she wants to whimper, but resists the urge.

Her vision goes white from the pain and she swears she blacks out momentarily before coming to and realising that maybe, _just maybe_ , pulling those wires isn’t a very good idea.

She tracks the wires to where they climb onto her chest, slipping underneath the shirt she had not been wearing when she had stumbled out of the convoy. This one is a dark violet and she’s wearing soft, thin brown pants that billow out at her ankles. She takes a deep breath, ignoring the stab of pain the movement warrants, and rolls up the hem of her shirt, exposing a swaddle of white bandages wrapped around her chest.

Toni shakes, the unease making her stomach curdle in protest.

With strength she is able to find within her, she tears at the bandages frantically, exposing a wide, rusted-over metal cylinder right in the middle of her chest, between her breasts, blood caking the rim, and she can now feel the bulk of it grinding down inside her chest cavity, like those hands she had hoped to hell were just nightmares that she could drink away ( _apparently not_ ).

Now, she knows why it hurt when she pulled at the wires.

Because the wires _are fucking inside her._


	3. (iii)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings specific for this chapter: body horror, non-consensual body modification, graphic descriptions of injuries and torture, the use of the 'c' word, non-consensual touching, sexual assault, threats of rape/non-consensual sex - the sort of thing that would happen if a woman was trapped in a cave with terrorists who were prepared to kill her if she didn't do what they said.

She leans over the side of the bed and promptly retches out the contents of her stomach, which is mostly bile and spit and blood. When she’s done, she leans back against the flimsy pillow and closes her eyes, counting to ten again and again until she knows, in her bones, that she won’t have a panic attack in some fucking cave.

She tugs at the wires again, sliding her hand down the length of them, where they lie connected to a decent-sized metal box – _a car battery_ , she registers.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you.”

Only then does she realise the man sitting in the corner, with his back to her, stirring a pot of something over a red-hot glow. She briefly curses herself for allowing herself to be caught off guard so easily, but with a great deal of effort, she manages to push herself upright and off the side of the bed, making sure her feet don’t touch the sludge of vomit and blood and water that’s congealing on the ground.

“What the fuck did you do to me?” she demands, her voice coming out like sandpaper, sore from hoarse from disuse except for screaming when they cut her chest wide open and anchored in a fucking car battery.

The man finally graces her with his face. He is much older than her, a good twenty-thirty years at least ( _Jarvis and him would’ve been the same age,_ she thinks and immediately puts the thought away because it’s an injustice to compare Jarvis, _her Jarvis_ , to this man who literally carved her up like a Thanksgiving turkey), hair shaved close to his scalp, with a grey-streaked goatee and silver-rimmed, round-eyed spectacles.

“What _I_ did?” The man raises an eyebrow. “What I did is to save your life.” He slides to his feet. “I removed all the shrapnel I could, but there's a lot left, and it's headed into your atrial septum,” he tells her, his voice slightly accented, as he puts down large blacksmith tongs. “Here, want to see? I have a souvenir. Take a look.”

He snatches up a small vial with small, jagged pieces of metal inside and shows it to her, shaking it such that they clink against the sides of the vial. He throws it to her, which she lets fall into her lap before she snatches it up (her irrational but very understandable trauma always shows up at the most inopportune of moments), peering at the metal – she recognises the alloy as the one she’d used in the same line of explosives as the one that struck her on the road back to Bagram, discoloured though the shrapnel may be.

“I’ve seen many wounds like that in my village. We call them the _walking dead_ , because it takes about a week for the barbs to reach the vital organs.”

The words curdle her blood as soon as Toni processes them. She bites down the urge to start shaking like a leaf – they cannot see her afraid; they will _not_ see her afraid.

 _We don’t negotiate with terrorists, Antonia_.

As much as it makes her mouth thin, her father’s words will get her through this.

He would never stand to see her so weak.

_Starks are made of iron, Antonia. Remember that. It may save your life one day._

She reaches behind her, grappling for the car battery until she can get a good handle on it and pulls it forward, so that it’s lying on the cot beside her. As long as she doesn’t stretch the wires too much, she can stomach the pain.

“What is this?” she asks, quietly, tapping the cylinder gently such that it doesn’t jostle in her chest.

Whoever this man is, threat he may be, he saved her life.

For now, he is her best, if not only, ally.

“ _That_ is an electromagnet, hooked up to a car battery, and it's keeping the shrapnel from entering your heart,” he explains, patiently.

Toni doesn’t react; instead, her mouth purses into a thin, impassive line. She rolls down the folds of her shirt, such that she is no longer casually flashing him her breasts, even though he doesn’t seem to care (she doesn’t know whether to be offended that he hasn’t been staring – most people consider her tits to be works of art and she takes pride in that _because they are fucking beautiful_ and she’s not just being arrogant – or to be comforted by the fact that he seems to be utterly uninterested in fucking her, which makes her think that he probably won’t take advantage of her current predicament, at least for now, because men _always_ take advantage).

As she rights her clothing, she notices a compact surveillance camera zeroing in on her ( _fucking perverts_ ).

The man sees where she is looking, and he hides his grimace with a lacklustre look of amusement.

“That's right. Smile.” He nods at her. “We met once, you know, at a technical conference in Bern.”

Toni clears her throat, her brow furrowing as she tries to place his face.

She can’t.

“I don't remember,” she confesses.

“No, you wouldn't,” he smiles at her, gently (his smile reminds her of Jarvis – _fuck, that hurts_ ). “If I had been that drunk, I wouldn't have been able to stand, much less give a lecture on integrated circuits.”

Toni makes a face.

“Where are we?” she asks, looking around.

Before he can answer her, there is a sound coming from somewhere beyond the large slabs of metal that clearly act as doors, and loud, angry, very male voices come from the other end, speaking in a language that she can’t understand.

Her companion storms over to her, seizing her by the arm and pulling her to her feet.

“Come on, stand up. _Stand up_!” he insists.

She bites back the cry of pain when the wires go taut and the electromagnet inside her jars inside her chest. It takes everything inside her to keep standing, as black spots fill her visions. She takes deep breaths, wrapping an arm around her stomach, and hobbles on her feet.

“Just do as I do,” he tells her. “Come on, put your hands up.”

Toni does as he tells her to, just as the metal doors swing open, and three men enter their chamber, two of which, fencing the man in the middle who Toni assumes to be the head honcho, aim familiar-looking rifles at Toni and her companion.

Toni inhales a sharp breath.

“Those are my guns. How did they get my guns?” she demands, lowly.

_Has the government been reselling my weapons? That’s breaching our contract. And even so, these are two-bit thugs out for a quick ransom. How would they have gotten their hands on my weapons?_

Her companion glares at her. “Do you understand me? Do as I do,” he snaps.

The leader steps forward, while more men gather behind him. He stretches out his arms, magnanimously, and declares something in Arabic (at least she assumes it’s Arabic) that Toni doesn’t understand.

She does however know he said her name at some point.

Her companion leans into her. “He says: _welcome, Antonia Stark, the most famous mass murderer in the history of America_.”

Toni reels back in affront.

The man continues in Arabic.

“He is honoured. He wants you to build the missile. The Jericho missile that you demonstrated.”

 _They were watching_ , she realises. _They planned this._

The head thug hands her companion a small piece of paper, curled up at the edges, which he tilts in her direction, revealing a monochrome photo of the Jericho missile she had just demonstrated in front of the US Army.

“This one.”

Toni takes a deep breath.

_Fuck this. Fuck them. Fuck everything._

“I refuse.”

The men drag her from the cavern, unceremoniously, by the hair. She bites at the hands that take the chance to grope at flesh she unwillingly presents to them, to which they laugh like her struggle is the biggest joke they’ve ever heard.

She doubts they’re used to women resisting.

They stop laughing when she knees one of them right in the crotch and he goes down like a sack of potatoes.

Aunt Peggy always said go for the balls.

But it’s a long drag from where she woke up and wherever it is they’re taking her, and the bruisers get their licks in.

She grits her teeth against the humiliation, and remembers each of their faces, remembers the way they jeer and paw at her breasts and between her legs (because apparently Toni Stark, wild, willful, fetishised Latina and openly pansexual, which they apparently translate to _mega slut who wants to fuck everyone_ , is asking for this, _the fucking cunts_ ).

It doesn’t matter what they do to her now – when she gets out of here, she will burn all of them to the ground, happily and with a smile on her face, because she doesn’t know or want to know anything else, anything better. 

They haul her to another alcove in the cave, in which there’s a long trough in the centre, overflowing with murky water.

 _Oh, shit_.

She doesn’t even have time to process what’s about to happen to her when they’re wrapping their hands in her hair (she’s going to need about ten hot _sterilising_ showers to get the feel of their hands off her) and shoving her head into the water.

They hold her arms as she screams into the water, the blood roaring in her ears. It goes in her eyes and ears and nose and mouth and into her hair and spills down her neck and front and she can’t _breathe_ , they won’t let her _breathe_ ; why won’t they let her breathe?

She’s flooded with panic and struggling, but they hold her arms firm against the trough, as her throat slowly opens, letting in pint by pint of water, even if she gags.

It fucking hurts, too.

Her lungs already feel like someone went at them with a meat tenderiser, but now it’s just like someone’s gone in and wrenched them out completely, leaving empty, burning rents in her chest cavity. Her stomach curdles in fear and nausea and she bites back the urge to vomit (she doubts she could, even if she wanted to – there is too much water and it’s _everywhere_ ).

“ _Tonia!_ ” someone screams.

God, she wants out now.

She wants to wake up.

Please, _please_ , let this be a dream, a nightmare.

Please let her wake up in Malibu.

When they pull her out, she promptly throws up the lining of her stomach, because it’s not like there’s anything else in there. She pants, loudly, a high-pitched wheeze to every breath she takes, as she claws desperately at the air. Her throat is raw and swollen on the inside; her eyes feel like they’ll fall out of their sockets at any point in time (she’s lucky that her face is soaked because if she had the strength to cry, at least it would be hidden); the wound on her chest feels skinned and abraded; and each breath feels like swallowing a lit candle.

She has never loved oxygen more than in this moment.

They ask her again.

She says no.

They do it to her again.

Her ears, nose, and eyes are on fire; her lungs hack up blood; she sees black spots in her vision; the electromagnet short-circuits; and her wound gets infected.

But she says no.

This follows like a routine: once, then twice, then thrice, then four times, then five times, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

She tells them to go fuck themselves every single time.

The threats escalate. Guns are shoved in her face and they threaten to cut off parts of her body. They scrape knives against her ankles and stomach and breasts and between her legs, reminding her that she only needs her arms and her head to make the Jericho for them – the rest of her is expendable.

The head thug warns her that his men have not had a woman in months, and if she doesn’t cooperate, he will give her to them as an incentive for their continued loyalty.

She spits in his face and smiles.

He backhands her, splitting open her lip.

Finally, after the tenth time they’ve drowned her, after she tells them to fuck off, she collapses into exhaustion and darkness.

She wakes up on the cot.

_Wow, déjà vu._

“You are very stubborn,” the man says, half-disapprovingly and half-in-awe, carefully sponging her wound clean.

“I am,” she agrees.

“You should do what they ask of you,” he tells her.

“I can’t,” she whispers.

“They will hurt you.”

“They already have,” she points out.

“There is much more they can do to you,” he says, solemnly.

“They can torture me. They can rape me. They can kill me,” she hums. “They won’t kill me, because they need me to make the Jericho. Rape… rape is the best threat a man has against a woman. It’s an ace-in-the-hole, a guarantee that a woman will do anything he asks of her if only to escape that fate. But they’re bluffing; they won’t rape me, because they won’t take the chance that I’m not fit for purpose anymore.” Her mouth twists in disdain. “And they’re already torturing me.”

“The abuse would stop,” he offers.

While the drowning is new, the harassment and assaults are nothing that she hasn’t already been through. She endured that; she can and _will_ endure this.

“It won’t,” she shrugs. “I’m a novelty to them. They thought I’d break because I’m a woman, and I haven’t. Now, they _have_ to see me break. It’s a matter of pride.”

“Will they see you break?” he asks her, curiously.

Toni bares her teeth in a bitter rendition of a smile. “No.”

* * *

They try being _good cop_ next.

They lead her and her companion outside the cave, where all of the men are gathered. They pull the burlap sack off her head, even though she’s already counted the exact number of steps it took from the doors of her and her companion’s little den to the entrance of the cave where give her back her sight.

The sun is blinding, and it hurts her eyes, to the point that she wants to pass out. It’s too bright; frankly, she prefers the cave, but they’ve clearly brought her out here for a reason. And once she can see with clarity, she understands why.

It’s a camp, a terrorist camp.

One of the men shoves her and she almost trips (at least they keep giving her pants to wear). Her companion follows her as they proceed down the small slope.

It’s not the camp that interests her.

It’s the hoard upon hoard of weapons that have _Stark Industries_ neatly daubed on the shell of every bomb, every missile, every mortar, every flamethrower, every gun, every crate.

God, there’s so many.

She can only imagine what they’ve done with her brainchildren.

The leader says something in Arabic.

Her companion translates for her again. “He wants to know what you think.”

She faces the leader, bravely. “I think you got a lot of my weapons,” she tells him, coldly.

_How? How do you have my weapons?_

The leader continues.

“He says they have everything you need to build the Jericho missile.”

Toni looks at her companion, waiting.

“He wants you to make the list of materials. He says for you to start working immediately, and when you're done, he will set you free.”

The leader holds out his hand, expectantly.

Toni feels sick to her stomach as she takes it, smiling her illusive smile.

“No, he won’t,” she says, knowingly.

“No, he won't,” her companion agrees, joining in smiling.

The leader grins and Toni’s smile feels like cement.

* * *

“I'm sure they're looking for you, Ms Stark. But they will never find you in these mountains,” her companion tells her, as they sit in their little den, the fire blazing between them.

“Toni,” she says, immediately, wrapping her shawl tightly around her shoulders. “People who save my life call me Toni.” Her lips tug up at the corners.

Her companion can’t help but give her an amused look. “Toni,” he concedes. “Look, what you just saw, that is your legacy, Toni. Your life's work, in the hands of those murderers. Is that how you want to go out? Is this the last act of defiance of the great Antonia Stark? Or are you going to do something about it?” her companion demands, urgently.

“Why should I do anything? They're going to kill me, kill you, either way,” she points out, wearily, staring into the wisps of the flame. “And if they don't, I'll probably be dead in a week.” She taps at the electromagnet hewed into her breastbone.

“Well, then,” her companion says, meaningfully. “This is a very important week for you, isn't it?

* * *

“If this is going to be my work station, I want it well-lit. I want these up,” Toni snaps at the thugs who are carrying in various weapons she had asked for.

It feels good to be in charge again, in her very bossyboots, crack-the-whip ponytail, and yes, she does take a great amount of pleasure in imposing her will upon men who had been roughing her up not a day ago.

Her companion is by her side, translating her instructions to expectant henchmen.

“I need welding gear. I don't care if it's acetylene or propane. I need a soldering station. I need helmets. I'm gonna need goggles. I would like a smelting cup. I need two sets of precision tools.”

* * *

Toni bites her lip in concentration as she uses an Allen key to unscrew the base of the missile.

“How many languages do you speak?” she asks, curiously.

“A lot,” her companion sniffs, while she pulls out the inside framework of the missile from out of the shell. “But apparently, not enough for this place. They speak Arabic, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, Mongolian, Farsi, Russian.”

Toni grimaces. “Who the fuck are these people?” she mutters.

“ _They_ are your loyal customers, dear girl. They call themselves the Ten Rings.”

She moves over to another missile and drills at the pointed tip, until the whole front part comes off. She reaches inside the missile-housing and pulls out a similar framework as the one she had been working on before.

“You know, we might be more productive if you include me in the planning process,” her companion offers.

Toni hums, noncommittally.

She surveys the framework and uses her forceps to carefully remove a strip of metal.

“Okay, we don't need this,” she mutters and throws the rest of the framework over her shoulder, upon which it crashes to the ground, much to her companion’s bewilderment.

He peers down at the metal strip between the forceps. “What is that?” he asks, confused.

“ _That_ is palladium, 0.15 grams. We need at least 1.6, so why don't you go break down the other eleven?” Toni looks up at him with a smile and a flutter of her eyelashes.

He narrows his eyes, but does as she asks, albeit long-sufferingly.

Once again, he reminds her of Jarvis.

* * *

Toni kneads the burnt-orange power and pats it into a small dish, smoothing it over until it’s all perfectly level and lays it out on the table. She then takes an iron tumbler and presses the rim into the powder, etching a perfectly-circular groove in the surface. She tips the palladium strips into the tumbler and hands it to her companion, which he proceeds to smelt in the fire, holding onto the vessel with the pair of blacksmith tongs he usually uses for cooking. After a while, Toni peers into the fire and sees that the palladium has sufficiently melted, thin, silvery and glimmering in the cup.

“Okay, it’s done,” she tells him.

Her companion carefully extracts the brimming cup of liquified palladium from the fire, turning around and carrying it towards the table.

“Careful,” Toni warns, shifting the car battery, which she has balanced over one of her shoulders, when the weight becomes too much for her spine to bear. “Careful, we only get one shot at this.”

She would run her fingers through her hair if she had full use of both of them.

He smiles, gently. “Relax. I have steady hands. Why do you think you're still alive?” he points out, smugly.

Toni places the car battery on the table while her companion bends down, stooping over the table and pouring the fluid into the groove incised in the murder.

“So, what do I call you?” she asks, wondering why it had never occurred to her to ask before.

 _My companion does have a nice ring to it_ , she thinks, amused.

“My name is Yinsen,” he replies.

“Yinsen,” she repeats. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Toni, but you already knew that.”

Yinsen looks at her with a smile. “Nice to meet you too,” he murmurs, his eyes twinkling.

Once the metal cools, Toni takes her forceps and extracts the thin ring of palladium she has shaped, and fits it onto a larger, circular metal plate.

It takes her a while, a lot of handwork and a great deal of smithing, but she finally constructs the casing with which she plans on replacing the electromagnet in her chest. She connects the wires extending out of it to her car battery, using it as an energy source to power the mechanism.

It lights up like a star in the sky, like the sky she hasn’t seen in weeks.

Toni just stares at it.

_This could save me._

_This could save us._

_We could leave this snake pit._

Yinsen comes up behind her. “That doesn't look like a Jericho missile,” he comments, dryly.

Toni swallows hard. “That’s because it’s a miniaturised arc reactor,” she tells him, lowly. “I got a big one powering my factory at home. It should keep the shrapnel out of my heart,” she muses.

_Hopefully._

“But what could it generate?” he asks, curiously.

Toni takes a deep breath, running over the calculations in her head once more. “If my math is right, and it _always_ is, three gigajoules per second.” She licks her lips.

“That could run your heart for fifty lifetimes,” Yinsen points out, in awe.

“Yeah,” she concedes. She bites her lower lip and gives him a deliberate look. “Or something big for fifteen minutes,” she says, slowly, evenly.

In response to his bewilderment, Toni brings over her sketches of the Jericho’s blueprints, carefully drawn onto sheets of thin, flimsy onionskin paper. She lays them down on the table and takes a step back, allowing Yinsen to carefully pore over them through his spectacles, his eyes narrowed.

“This is our ticket out of here,” she tells him, firmly.

Yinsen pulls back, his thick brows furrowing in the middle. “What is it?”

“Flatten them out and look,” she advises him, a small, satisfied smile threatening to curve across her mouth.

Yinsen frowns but does as she says, flattening the sheets out on top of each other. Her sketches weren’t drawn in random places as would be the first, immediate assumption. Once Yinsen had flattened the sheets, he can see a methodical, highly-technical design of what he believes is a suit of armour, suited for a woman’s body.

“Oh. _Oh, wow_ ,” he breathes. “Impressive.”

* * *

This time, it’s worse.

Maybe it’s because she’s not unconscious and very much aware that Yinsen is performing complicated cardiothoracic surgery on her without any of the proper tools, equipment, sanitation or support; maybe it’s because the casing for the arc reactor needs to go deeper than the electromagnet did; or maybe it’s because no one’s ever miniaturised an arc reactor before and she’s very much aware that Yinsen is installing a highly powerful, highly unpredictable energy source _in her fucking chest cavity_.

Maybe it’s because, _shocker_ , it fucking hurts when he cuts into her, prises her chest cavity open (still corrosive and sore from her first open heart surgery), detaches the rusted electromagnet (which Toni is certain has given her some kind of disease), scoops out even more of her thorax (at one point, through damp, bloodshot eyes and hazy, indistinct vision, she sees bits of her sternum and her ribs and her lungs in his hands), just so he can put in the arc reactor casing.

She thanks God when she passes out from the pain.

When she wakes up, Yinsen has his fingers entwined with hers, as he thumbs an arc back and forth across the skin on the back of her hand.

She wonders if he does such a thing for his daughter. She wonders what it’s like to have a father so gentle with her.

“How’d it go?” she asks, roughly.

“As far as I can tell, it was a success,” he tells her, gently, squeezing her warm hand.

Toni’s lips twitch in relief (she’s much too tired to actually smile) and sinks back against the pillow. “Can I get up yet?” she asks, curiously.

“Not quite yet, I think. There is still a great deal of recovery left, Antonia. The procedure was no laughing matter. Frankly, it’s remarkable that you survived it at all; you are truly formidable, my dear.”

Toni huffs out a short laugh. “That’s what I do,” she teases.

Yinsen pats her hand, as she lets herself fall back asleep.

Before she completely loses herself to unconsciousness, the realisation comes to her like a blow.

She trusts him.


	4. (iv)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for this chapter: menstruation talk (if that squicks you out - so judging but not judging), creepy touching by terrorist guy, attempted torture, character death (but expected).
> 
> because i'm a cow, i should've said this in the first chapter, but big thanks (amazing, huge thanks) to my betas/all-round bffs and cheer-readers [rebelmeg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelmeg/pseuds/rebelmeg) and [roseandthorns28](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseandthorns28/pseuds/roseandthorns28).

Toni looks down at her thighs, streaked with blood.

Wow, her uterus cannot give her a goddamn break for once in her life.

In any case, it comes much later than she had expected, most likely due to all of the trauma to her body in past weeks.

“Fuck,” she says, definitively. She looks at Yinsen, hopefully, her nose wrinkling. “Don’t suppose you have any pads here, huh?”

Yinsen stares back at her, thoughtfully.

“What?” Toni raises an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those men who cringes at the thought of vaginas being used for anything but sex. Menstruation, the horror,” she mocks.

Yinsen can’t help but smile at the sheer disgust in her voice (at least, she guesses). “No,” he murmurs. “I am not.” He jumps to his feet. “And no, there are no sanitary napkins here. But I will find you supplies.”

“By all means, take your time,” she grunts, shifting on the cot, as the backs of her legs slide across the still-wet blood congealing on the mattress.

She’s going to have to do this God knows how many times before she and Yinsen get the hell out of here _._

* * *

Toni clenches her thighs together, shifting in discomfort. Even though she’s worn the rag inside her underwear for two days now, it’s still not the most comfortable or the most hygienic method to absorb the flow of blood (she’s already making plans to a reusable cloth sanitary napkin that women can use indefinitely after Yinsen explained to her the plight of so many women in this region – she remembers Ayushma telling her the same thing after a spontaneous trip to Bangalore in 1992 but she fell into a pit of weapons soon after and never quite resurfaced).

She lets the dice roll, sticking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, between her teeth, as she does so. She smiles, bitterly, when she sees the result.

Her dice are always loaded.

“Good roll,” Yinsen hums.

“So, you still haven't told me where you're from,” Toni says, casually.

Yinsen snatches up the dice. “I am from a small town called Gulmira. It's actually a nice place.”

“You got a family?” Toni wonders out loud.

Yinsen nods. “Yes, and I will see them when I leave here.”

The image of him, with children and a woman who loves him, comes easily to her mind – Yinsen is just that kind of person.

She wonders then, what she’ll do first when she’s free. She resolves then and there to take care of Yinsen and his family, buy him a house, so they can all be together. Maybe even a clinic, she thinks, so he can practice. She’ll pay for his kids’ education. It will never be enough to repay what he’s done for her; she will always fall short. And somehow, she doesn’t want a debt between them; she wants to do this because she likes the man.

She likes his kind eyes and his kind smile and dry humour.

“And you, Antonia?”

She thinks of Rhodey.

He’s dead for all she knows, and she already has so many ghosts.

She never wanted to add Rhodey, Rhodey of all people, to that graveyard, and now he’s dead because of her.

But she can’t mourn him. Not now, not yet.

Not until she’s turned this place to ash.

“No,” she says, firmly.

If she thinks of those she loves, who still live, she will never be able to do what needs to be done.

She’ll see them when she gets out of here.

 _Aunt Peggy, John, Rebecca, Sharon, Ayushma, Pepper_.

She carves the list of names into her heart and puts it away.

She can’t afford to linger on them.

“No?” Yinsen raises an eyebrow.

Toni shrugs, impassively.

Yinsen sighs. “So, you are a woman who has everything and nothing.”

Toni laughs like it hurts her to breathe (and it does). “That sounds just about right.”

* * *

Purim goes by and it feels like she’s disappointing Ana so fundamentally, by not being able to celebrate it. It’s unfair, but she stomachs it.

But she can’t help but think of everything she would’ve done at home, if Ana had been alive to do it properly with her: using groggers and heckling when Haman’s name is read; getting drunk; making _hamantaschen_ and going to give gifts to the poor.

The worst blow, however, is missing Passover.

That day, she thinks of how many years, as a girl, she curled up on Ana’s lap, even when the woman grew ill, with four cups of wine and a Seder plate, as they went through each of the steps, as Ana threaded her fingers through Toni’s hair while narrating to her all of the stories in a low, haunting voice.

 _Kadesh. Urchatz. Karpas. Yachatz. Magid. Rachtza. Motzi. Matzah. Maror. Korech. Shulchan Orech. Tzafun. Barech. Hallel. Nirtzah_.

The steps are etched into her brain.

Hell, even her father paid attention during the Seder.

She just hopes Ana will forgive her.

* * *

They are so close to finishing the armour when the thugs storm into their den. This time, however, the head terrorist Toni had become accustomed to, takes a backseat while a definitely-more-menacing bald man takes the lead.

He stares at her for a moment, standing there, with her hands on top of her head. His eyes travel downwards, focusing on the sharp blue light of her arc reactor, or perhaps her tits, she can’t be too sure.

“Relax,” he nods at her, casually.

Toni is startled, and she looks at Yinsen briefly before dropping her hands, steadily. He prowls towards her, like a wolf, stopping just in front of her. His fingers run down her wide neckline, grazing over the notches in her ribs, before slipping inside the dip between her breasts ( _so, tits, then_ ). They travel down the front of her black dress and tap against the arc reactor.

_Joy._

Her skin visibly crawls where he’s touching her.

He steps back, abruptly.

“The bow and arrow once was the pinnacle of weapons technology,” he begins, grandly. “It allowed the great Genghis Khan to rule from the Pacific to the Ukraine.” He walks over to the missile that they had cannibalised for parts, fiddling with one of the wires. “An empire twice the size of Alexander the Great and four times the size of the Roman Empire.”

He finds his way over to one of the tables, upon which the sketches that form Toni’s blueprints for the armour are lying. He picks them up, while Toni grits her teeth and deliberately avoids Yinsen’s nervous gaze. But the man doesn’t seem to find anything in his perusal and he puts the sheets of onionskin paper back onto the table.

“But today, whoever holds the latest Stark weapons rules these lands.” He turns to her so that she can see the drive in his dark eyes. “And soon, it will be my turn.”

He stares at her, head-on – he wants her to falter, but she won’t.

He’s never met anyone with the resolve she has.

He says something in Urdu, which she fails to grasp. Her knowledge of the language is based on a bunch of Hindi movies she used to watch with Ayushma so many years ago, and it doesn’t help her the way it should now. She understands a few words, here and there, but it ultimately doesn’t do her any good.

Yinsen replies. He’s fidgeting, and Toni wishes she could tell him to stand still before he blows their cover.

The man turns around and stalks over to Yinsen, continuing the conversation.

It all comes to a head when the man orders his henchmen to seize Yinsen by the arms.

 _Shit_.

She watches as the man takes a piece of red-hot coal from the fire between the blacksmith tongs, smoke curling around his face.

“What does he want?” she asks Yinsen, sharply.

Yinsen can’t reply because the guards shove his head down onto an anvil while the man holds the burning coal precariously close to Yinsen’s face.

Toni clenches her fists, to the point where her nails dig into her palm.

“Your Jericho,” Yinsen replies, still in Urdu, but Toni understands that.

The man demands Yinsen _tell him now_ , and Toni steps forward.

She’s had enough of the toxic masculinity routine.

“You want a delivery date or something?” she demands, crossing her arms over her chest.

They don’t like it when she starts walking towards Yinsen, and the henchmen all shout something in warning and point their guns at her.

Toni rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. You kill me and you don’t get your damn bomb, so why don’t you do your whole dick-measuring contest somewhere else?” she snaps and the henchmen all look to their new leader for further instructions.

He nods at them and they take a step back.

She gestures to Yinsen with a broad wave of her hand. “I need him,” she huffs like they’re all stupid for having made her explain all of this to them (they are stupid, but not for the reasons they think she thinks). “He’s a passable assistant, and I, as you’ve probably guessed, as a frail, delicate woman, lack the upper body strength to make a bomb,” she says, sarcastically.

The new leader narrows his eyes – they both know she’s screwing with them (ha, like she’s ever needed a man to do her work for her, manual labour or not), but she’s been in captivity for three months now.

She doesn’t really give a fuck.

The man drops the blistering coal on the anvil beside Yinsen’s smushed face and tosses the blacksmith’s tongs somewhere over his shoulders, nodding at his men to release Yinsen and leave with him.

“You have till tomorrow to assemble my missile,” he warns her, smoothly, threat lacing his voice.

* * *

Toni hammers at the scorching metal plating, her hair and face damp with sweat, until she sees some sort of curve towards the edges and it finally starts to resemble the front side of a helm. The effort makes her chest hurt, where the arc reactor squeezes her lungs in tight, her ribs throbbing, but she pushes through it. Once she is content with the shape, she picks it up with larger blacksmith’s tongs and carries it over to a pail of water, promptly dunking it inside and dodging the steam that floats upwards.

Once it sufficiently cools, Toni pulls it out of the bucket and drops it unceremoniously on top of the table at which Yinsen is working.

This was the last piece, and now it’s done.

“Ready?” she raises an eyebrow.

Yinsen sighs and stands. “Are _you_?”

“We’ll have to see, won’t we?” Toni murmurs, vaguely.

There is a great deal of preparation before Toni can even put on the suit. The metal would serve no true protection if it were just her skin underneath the armour, so she puts on a jacket underneath and thick, dark welding gloves to protect her hands from the heat and clout of the blasts her armour is capable of. Yinsen wraps thick strips of leather padding around her neck to account for the soft spot of her throat, which the armour won’t cover.

Yinsen helps her bring the armour over her head and settle it around her torso, such that the bright lustre of her arc reactor fits neatly into the centre plate and all the pieces clink into place. He ties her hair into a loose braid, which he then tucks into the leather straps swaddled around her neck, so that it won’t get in her eyes or compromise the helmet’s balance on top of her head.

Yinsen adjusts the breastplate. “Okay?” he queries. “Can you move?” He mimes squeezing his hand, to which she does the same.

Toni nods, taking a deep breath. Her breasts feel a little squished underneath the metal plating, but she can’t do much about it, not here, at least. She’ll have to bear the discomfort for just a while longer (she hopes). The entire armour is heavy, but she has experience and physical strength on her side – she has pretty much done her own forging since she was four years old, and she has so much more muscle than what people expect of her, lithe as she looks.

“Okay, say it again,” Yinsen tells her, firmly.

“Forty-one steps straight ahead,” Toni begins. “Then sixteen steps, that’s from the door, fork right, thirty-three steps, turn right.”

“Yinsen! Yinsen! Stark!” There are shouts on the other side of the door.

Yinsen’s hands speed up.

“Open the door!”

“ _Kezeket fel_!”

The guards continue to shout at them in Hungarian. This time, Toni understands completely and thanks Ana fervently for being most insistent that Toni learn _her_ mother tongue after she successfully became fluent in her mother’s native Catalan and Argentine Spanish and her father’s native German and Polish (much to Howard’s disapproval, since his and Toni’s non-Anglo-Saxon past was something he had tried very hard to shake off, but she didn't really care about pissing him off – it was Ana who taught her Yiddish and Hebrew, ensuring that Toni wouldn’t lose what was her birthright, what she, Howard and Ana shared, and what Ana held so dear).

“What’s going on inside? Hands up!”

“Say something. Say something back to him,” Toni insists.

“He’s speaking Hungarian. I don't...” Yinsen protests.

Toni growls under her breath. “ _Egy perc_ , _egy perc_ ,” she yells out.

She looks down to see Yinsen staring at her.

“You speak Hungarian,” he says, slowly.

Toni shrugs. “My accent is shit though.”

The men on the outside are clearly unimpressed by her keeping them waiting (they should take a page out of the books of the idiots she dates), so they attempt to open the door forcibly, unaware of the makeshift bomb Toni had rigged to the other side of the door, which detonates upon the disconnection of the doors. The cloud of fire that spirals from the bomb sends the men flying and cuts right through to their muscle tissue and bone.

If they’re still alive, which in itself is highly doubtful (because Toni is always very good at whatever she does), they’ll die miserably.

She can’t bring herself to care.

“How’d that work?” Toni asks, curiously.

Yinsen peeks his head out and sees the two dead (or nearly dead) men lying on the floor, quite some far away from the doors through the smoke.

“Oh, my goodness,” he mutters and returns to bolting the armour closed. “It worked all right.”

Toni’s lips twitch. “That's what I do,” she says, smugly.

Yinsen’s hands are shaking with nerves when he tries to return to securing the various bolts and screws that need to be in place for the armour to work.

“Let me finish this,” he mutters.

Toni hushes him, seeing his panic. “It’s okay; initialise the power sequence.”

“Okay.”

But he stays still.

Toni sighs. “Now!” she barks.

Yinsen jumps like he’s just been restarted and rushes over to the computer. He fiddles with his glasses for a moment and braces his fingers over the keyboard, ready to tap at Toni’s go-ahead.

“Tell me. Tell me,” he says, quickly.

“ _Function 11_ ,” Toni soothes. “Tell me when you see a progress bar. It should be up right now. Talk to me. Tell me when you see it.”

“Yes,” he declares. “I have it.”

Toni inhales. “Press _Control_ and then _I_ ,” she instructs.

“Got it.” Yinsen swipes at his sweat-ridden forehead.

Dust and sand rattle from above as heavy footsteps creak behind the door to their chamber.

“Good, now, come over here and button me up,” Toni orders.

“Okay. All right.”

Yinsen rounds on her and begins drilling the screws in.

“Every other hex bolt,” she advises.

“They’re coming!” Yinsen exclaims, his voice going thready with panic, as he shoots the open door a nervous look.

“Nothing pretty.” Toni’s voice becomes firm (she won’t get anything done, they won’t get out of here, if Yinsen loses his nerve now). “Just get it done.”

“They're coming,” Yinsen bites out, loudly.

“Make sure the checkpoints are clear before you follow me out, okay?” Toni demands.

Yinsen is staring at the computer screen, on which the progress bar is still around a miserable halfway.

“We need more time,” he murmurs. He turns around. “Hey,” he calls out, catching Toni’s attention, who looks up from the gauntlet she was adjusting. “I'm gonna go buy you some time.” He says, adamantly.

“Stick to the plan!” Toni shouts as Yinsen ignores her, running out of the den and grabbing one of the dead men’s rifles (at least she thinks so, by what she can hear). “Stick to the plan!” She hears wild gunshots and her heart thumps in her chest like a racehorse because _she can’t fucking see anything_. “Yinsen!” She calls out, helplessly.

_For fuck’s sake, just answer me._

_Please._

_I can’t have another person die for me._

She stares at the progress bar on the computer.

_Come on. Hurry up._

It feels like years, but the progress bar finally hits 100%, whatever electricity there is in the room humming with the effort of powering her armour. Once the calibration is completed, Toni pulls free of the apparatus that acted as the framework for the armour, just as the entire den goes dark.

She doesn’t move when she hears the sound of soldiers running into the den.

Her fist clenches.

Her armour creaks and they all immediately begin firing into the centre of the den, where they think the sound came from. The men start to peruse through the room, until one squints his eyes into the light of her arc reactor.

 _Show time_.

She backhands him, fiercely, sending him crashing into a wall, upon which she hears a sharp snap. The others begin to fire their guns, randomly, shooting at an empty den, until she looms out of the darkness, like Batman, and swipes them out of the way with a satisfying smack. The lone guard starts firing at her frantically, but he isn’t able to pierce the metal plating anywhere on her body. She stalks forward, clunky and very obvious, and hits him right in the jaw with her metal fist and he goes flying.

God, she hopes he’s dead.

The thugs continue to run at her, bombarding her with bullets, but it’s all very futile, because not only is she a fucking badass, but they threatened her.

They put their hands on her.

They held her down and tried to drown her in a trough of dirty water like she was a fucking rabid dog.

They threatened to kill Yinsen.

They tried to use Yinsen to strong-arm her into doing what they want.

_Fuck it. They have it coming._

She literally just pounds her way out of the cave. The men roar and rush at her like some charging mob as they come out of the woodwork, but she swats them out of her way like they’re nothing more than irrelevant flies to her. She follows them through the cave tunnels until they shut a pair of metal doors on her, hoping that will be enough to stop her, inadvertently trapping one of the men on her side. He bangs on the door, screaming in a language that she doesn’t understand, and finally realises his release is futile. He turns around, his terrified, sweaty face illuminated in the glow of her arc reactor.

She knows that face.

She memorised all of their faces.

And she remembers what she promised.

She seizes him by the scruff of his neck, lifting him bodily off the ground, and he screams a high-pitched, keening sound, as his legs scramble ridiculously in mid-air.

He’s afraid.

_Good._

Anyone who ever thought her soft would be blown into the water if they could see her now, slamming the thug into the metal doors, until it starts to cave outwards under the strain. The metal finally bursts apart with a loud crash, rock and dust falling from the rickety ceiling. The thugs are smart enough to run away from her, rather than engaging her when they know they’ll lose. Toni lashes out with her bulky metal arm, but just her luck, it jams inside the rock wall. One of the thugs is brave enough to stop running and instead, he points the barrel of his handgun at Toni’s head.

Just _his_ luck, because as soon as he fires the gun, the bullet hits her helmet and snaps back, cutting through skin and bone and muscle, until it splits through his brain and kills him instantly. Toni turns around and forcibly yanks her arm out of the wall and stalks forward, stepping over his corpse.

When Toni rounds the next corner, she sees Yinsen writhing on a bunch of filthy sacks, blood splattered across his clothes.

“Yinsen!” she cries out.

“Watch out!” he warns through clenched teeth and pain.

Toni turns and sees the bald man from earlier, training a grenade launcher on her. She ducks as the grenade hurls right towards her and it hits the wall behind her, turning it into dust.

Thankfully (and unfortunately for the jackass who threatened to burn Yinsen’s eye right out of his socket), she is unscathed.

She flips open a panel on her left forearm, revealing a mounted rocket launcher. She smiles and lets it fly with extreme prejudice, raising her arm just slightly, such that it hits the ceiling and the stone breaks away easily, burying him under strewn rubble instantly.

_Douchebag._

Toni doesn’t stop to stare and lumbers towards Yinsen, casting aside one of the sacks lying on top of him. She lifts her helm away from her face, so that he can see her face, and kneels beside him.

“Yinsen!” Her hands hover over his body, anxiously.

_There’s so much red._

“What-what can I do?” she demands, hurriedly.

“Antonia,” he murmurs, reaching for her hand, sluggishly.

Toni takes it without missing a beat, squeezing.

“We have to go,” she insists. “Come on. I need you to-to get up and-” Something unpleasant twists in her chest. “Move for me, come on. We got a plan. We’re gonna stick to it.” She reassures herself more than she does him.

It shows on his face, because he gives her a sad, pitying smile.

“This was always the plan, Antonia,” he intones.

Toni shakes her head, desperately. She tugs on his hand. “Come on. You want to see your family, right? Well, you’re gonna. But you need to get up first.”

“My family is dead.”

The impact of his words knocks the air right out of her lungs.

“I’m going to see them now, Antonia,” he soothes, touching her cheek. “It’s okay. I want this. _I want this_.”

Her eyes are damp with tears.

“Thank you for saving me,” she whispers.

“Don't waste it.” His hand tightens around hers, his long, thin fingers threaded through hers. “Don't waste your life, Antonia.”

Toni yanks off the glove and splays a hand on Yinsen’s chest, feeling it go still under her palm, and it comes away slick with blood.

For the first time in years, Toni feels like crying, because for the first time, in a very long time, she’s feeling thick, cloying, _agonising_ grief.

She forgot how much she hated it. 

But she pulls it together and flings on the glove, rounding on the thugs that have scurried out of the cave, in fear of her.

_Good._

They’re waiting for her when she emerges from the cave, crouching down with their guns lined up against her. As soon as they can see her silver, heavyset form in the entrance to the cave, they begin firing. The bullets come in contact with the armour, knocking against her skin somewhat painfully, but her adrenaline is enough to ignore it for the time being.

Finally, they realise it’s all in vain and take a step back, their guns going slack in their hands.

“My turn,” she rasps.

Fire gushes from the flamethrowers installed in the base of her vambrace. It envelops all of the men, either burning them horrifically such that they’ll probably die of infection or swelling and tissue damage in their airways and lungs, or their entire body just simply turns to dust then and there, in the desert.

She turns on her feet, making sure that the fire converges with the hoard of weapons ( _her_ weapons) the Ten Rings had accumulated for themselves.

She watches them burn and smiles under her helm, because she isn’t their fucking dealer ( _loyal customers_ , Yinsen had said and it still makes her sick to her stomach).

Her smile falls.

She never wanted this.

 _They were right. I am a murderer_.

What she’s done here isn’t enough. She needs to make sure that something like this never happens again, not because of her.

She needs to do more.

She _will_ do more.

* * *

Toni leaves the camp in a cloud of flames, as the men continue to shoot at her (they’re using her weapons, so when the machine guns start colliding into her, no matter how much armour she’s wearing, no matter how strong it is, _it fucking hurts_ ). She escapes the onslaught by flicking a red switch in the innards of her vambrace and jettisoning into the air. Unsurprisingly, the rocket fuel in her boots don’t last long, having been scavenged from the propulsion systems in missiles that Toni had cannibalised, and she careens in an arc towards the ground.

 _Joy_ , she winces and braces for impact.

Toni hits the sand with a scream and a burst of sand clouding in the air. The armour falls apart, the pieces scattered around where she is buried in the sand. She shakes her head free of the helm and the remaining scraps of metal still clinging to her. She spits out a mix of blood and sand onto the ground as she stumbles to her feet, her entire body aching with the effort (it doesn’t help that her whole upper body hasn’t quite recovered from half of her thorax being pulled out of her chest cavity to make way for an electromagnet and later, a miniaturised arc reactor).

Toni winces. She can feel the arc reactor shifting slightly inside her chest, the sharp sting dissolving into the ever-present ache that she thinks has and will be her constant companion for the rest of her life. She rubs her breastbone where the arc reactor sits and plods away from the scraps of her armour. She looks up and the sun burns her eyes to the point of tears.

She winces and looks down at her feet immediately, wiping at her eyes furiously.

She hasn’t seen the sun in three months.

And now, even with it right _there_ , she still can’t look at it.


	5. (v)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no specific warnings for this chapter, i think.
> 
> again, thanks to my lovely meg for betaing this chapter!

Toni’s pretty sure she’s been schlepping through this desert for hours.

Or, at the very least, it feels like hours.

 _My people spent forty years in the desert. I’ll be fine_ , she reminds herself.

Her jacket is draped over her head and neck like a cowl, shielding her eyes from the sun. There are blisters stretching across her body, rubbing against the insides of her tank and pants. She ignores the sting, just as she does her throat, which feels like razor blades are scraping down the raw tissue and cartilage, chafed from the lack of water and the dust and sand she has inadvertently swallowed throughout her long slog through the desert.

She pants her way over another hill, with one arm wrapped around her abdomen, even though pain blooms in her throat and chest and stomach with every breath she swallows down. The mangled organs in her chest burn and clench with each gulp of hot, sticky air, and the still-healing incisions stretch painfully around the arc reactor, which jostles inside her torso with every step she takes.

It’s when she finally crosses the dune that she hears a familiar whirring sound. She turns around to see two Pave Hawks flying right over her.

“Hey!” she screams, waving her free hand in the arm, stumbling forwards at a run.

Her heart sticks in her throat as the helicopters finally set down some ways away, and she laughs in disbelief and gratitude. It all overwhelms her so much that finally she just sinks onto the sand in a heap of weary flesh, trembling as she watches Rhodey run towards her, accompanied by four other airmen.

_He’s not dead. He’s not dead. He’s not dead._

Rhodey slows to a stop when he’s not more than a foot or two from her. His eyes rake up and down, frowning at the light leaping from her chest. He falters slightly when he narrows in on the arc reactor, paling with realisation, and winces at the blistering sunburn scaling across her exposed skin.

“Hey, Legs, long time, no see,” he teases, lightly. “How was the fun-vee?”

Toni gives him a dull, unsteady smile, baring just a hint of her white teeth, her dry mouth straining and splitting under the effort.

Rhodey kneels in front of her, curling a large hand around the back of her neck.

“Next time, you ride with me, okay?” he rumbles in her ear.

He pulls her close and she goes willingly, clutching at him and sinking against the warm skin of his neck that she can burrow into through the folds of his uniform.

_Rhodey. Rhodey. Rhodey. Rhodey._

_You came for me._

The weight of him feels so good, so warm, so comforting that she’s not ashamed that she starts to cry.

She hasn’t cried in years, not that she’s ever had much of a reason to. To be honest, she hasn’t known many people to waste her tears on. Tears have always been a weakness in her eyes, something that could later on be used against her. In fact, Jarvis (the _first_ Jarvis), Ana, Aunt Peggy, her mother, they had all told her that _you were always such a happy baby, Antonia_.

She’s crying now, though.

“I thought you died,” she mumbles.

“I thought _you_ died,” he retorts. “God, you’re such a bitch.”

She nods into his shoulder.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here,” Rhodey says roughly in her ear and helps her to her feet.

Rhodey leads her to the helicopter, into which she climbs, stumbling as her feet finally land on the floor of the helicopter. A large hand stops her from tumbling to the floor, steadying her. She looks up at the person both nimble and brave enough to catch her, and _holy sweet mother of fuck, he’s beautiful._

He’s tall and broad and whiskey-brown-eyed and there’s miles and miles of dark, gorgeous  skin (at least, she’s guessing because his uniform is covering most of it). There’s a slight gap to his front two teeth and a neatly-shaped goatee, with his black hair shorn close to his scalp in the standard military cut.

He holds his hand out. “Staff Sergeant Samuel Wilson, ma’am,” he introduces himself with a broad grin stretching across his handsome face.

_Now I know what I want for my birthday._

But Toni doesn’t have much in her to flirt right now. Nonetheless, she gives him a weary smile and a flutter of her eyelashes in return.

“Hey there, soldier, how goes the day?” she croaks out.

He chuckles, smoothly. “We should get you to sit down, Ms Stark. We still need to check you over.”

“I’ll bet,” she says, dryly, finding the strength somewhere inside her to waggle her eyebrows.

She sees Rhodey roll his eyes out of the corner of her eye. She turns her head and manages to muster a winning smile.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, leading her over to a seat.

She sinks down with a lot of pain, her muscles still aching after her violent fall in the armour. One arm is still wrapped around her abdomen, in an effort to keep the arc reactor where it is sitting in her chest – she can’t do much about her insides spasming with pain, but she can make sure that the arc reactor doesn’t shift too much, such that the reactor casing doesn’t scrape against anything else inside her chest.

Rhodey takes a seat beside her (frankly, she’s surprised that he’s shirking his responsibilities as Lieutenant Colonel to tend to her, but she can see the heaviness, the helplessness, the hopelessness in his dark eyes – these three months haven’t been easy for him either).

Sergeant Wilson kneels in front of her. He eyes the arc reactor with trepidation and then leans in, looking as though he’s steeling himself for the conversation he’s about to have. He eyes Rhodey nervously.

“Quick question, ma’am, should we be concerned about that thing in your chest?”

Toni looks down at the vivid blue light in between her breasts.

She smiles, wryly. “It’s not a bomb, if that’s what you were thinking.”

Sergeant Wilson waits for a moment, searching her features carefully. Then, he clearly sees something that makes him trust that she’s telling the truth, nodding, and the tension is broken just like that. He flashes a small torch in her eyes, from which she cringes, visibly.

“Your pupils are dilated. Your eyes haven’t adjusted to the light just yet,” he muses. “It’ll take a bit longer for your retinas to desensitise again, but they should be fine. You’re also very pale,” he comments.

Toni shrugs, despite the ache in her ribcage and the unpleasant stretch of her scorched skin. “I didn’t get much sun these past three months,” she explains.

“Hm, I’m betting it’s the lack of Vitamin D and the dehydration as well, so it shouldn’t be too much of a worry. You have quite a bit of sunburn, but you walked a good long way from where they were keeping you prisoner, so it’s to be expected.”

Toni gives Sergeant Wilson a sultry smile that makes him grin, red blossoming over his cheekbones. “I’m tenacious.”

Rhodey narrows his eyes and Sergeant Wilson clears his throat, avoiding his superior’s gaze. “It should peel in a couple of days. Just in case, I’d advise you get the physician at the base to give you the once-over.”

Toni looks up at him through her eyelashes. “That’s not something you can do for me?”

Sergeant Wilson winks at her. “Unfortunately, it’s not.”

Rhodey groans beside her. “Wow, I didn’t miss _this_ at all.” He levels a flinty look at Sergeant Wilson. “Sergeant, I believe you have work to do,” he warns.

Sergeant Wilson clears his throat and jumps to his feet, the red blush stark on his face, making his way to another airman, who whistles from his spot near the helicopter doors.

“Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him blush like that before,” he teases, elbowing Sergeant Wilson in the abdomen.

Toni’s lips twitch. “What can I say? I have a gift.”

“Well, ma’am, clearly we’ve recovered a national treasure,” the other airman says, charmingly.

Toni raises an eyebrow. “And who’s we?” she asks, belligerently.

He approaches her, slightly cockily. “Staff Sergeant Riley Maddox, Ms Stark. We’re all glad to see you’re okay. Probably no one more than the Colonel here.”

Rhodey clears his throat, levelling them with a warning look. “I’m sure you men have work to do,” he points out, flatly.

Sergeant Wilson and Sergeant Maddox shift on their feet, awkwardly, and go back to helping the rest of their squadron ready the helicopter for departure.

Sometimes she’s still wonderstruck (and frankly entertained) when she sees soldiers quiver in fear in front of Rhodey, _her_ honeybear, the guy who once bumped into his own reflection in the mirror when he was drunk and kept apologising to whom he thought was another person.

“You’re so dominating, buttercup. I love it,” Toni teases.

Rhodey groans, his head slumping forwards. “Why do you always have to make everything non-platonic?”

“Because I love screwing with you,” she admits. “And you missed it. Don’t lie.” She wags her finger in front of his face.

“Yeah,” Rhodey says, quietly, bumping her shoulder with his. “I did.”

Toni ducks her head, so he can’t see her smile, shy as it comes.

One of the airmen makes a sound and Toni looks up, expectantly.

“Quick question, ma’am,” Sergeant Maddox begins, and then hesitates visibly.

“Sergeant?” she prompts.

“I just wanted to know, that smoking crater we saw a couple of miles back, where the Ten Rings’ operation was, was that you?” he asks, curiously.

Toni just winks at him.

He and Sergeant Wilson exchange equally-awestruck looks.

“Wow,” they both mutter in unison.

Toni’s mouth lifts in a smug smile.

* * *

Toni steadfastly declines all of the considerable attempts by the base physician to examine her chest, waiting out her forced recuperation for a day or two before the higher-ups deign to allow her to leave.

Rhodey stays with her the entire time, sleeps in her bed at night, curled around her (she can’t sleep on her back or on her stomach anymore because the arc reactor hurts too much), clutching at her as if he’s afraid that if he lets go, she’ll fade away right there in his arms. The first night, she woke up and immediately cringed because she didn’t know where she was; the room was too bright, the sheets were too white, and she felt sterile.

The second day, she has guests.

Sharon strides into the room she’s kept in, with John and Rebecca, her mother and uncle and Aunt Peggy’s only two children, a certain amount of flurry to their walk. When they see her lying in the bed, their faces crack open.

Sharon rushes over to the side and throws her arms around her.

Toni winces. “Careful. Sunburn.”

Sharon pulls away, slightly, her eyes crinkled in concern. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

Toni smiles, weakly, at her and snatches up her hand. “It’s all good, Share Bear.”

Sharon grimaces, tucking a lock of her blonde hair behind her ear. “You promised you wouldn’t call me that anymore,” she complains.

Toni’s eyes crinkle, kindly. “I lied,” she teases. She snatches up the water bottle on the table beside her cot, taking a swig. “How’d you guys even get here?” she wonders out loud.

“James brought us,” Rebecca tells her, taking a seat on the bed beside her thighs and smoothing her thumb across Toni’s palm.

“Plus, I have some street cred now,” Sharon says, smugly.

Toni raises an eyebrow. “Share Bear, believe me, you have zero street cred.”

Sharon makes a mock-hurt sound. “Rude.”

Rebecca squeezes Toni’s hand. “How are you feeling, Tinkertoni?” she asks, concerned.

“I’m good, Becca,” Toni soothes.

John scoffs from where he’s standing. “You were just kidnapped for three months, and you’re _good_?” he demands, disbelievingly.

Toni levels him a withering look. “What d’you want me to say?” she retorts.

“Why don’t you tell us the truth?”

“John-” Rebecca chides, quietly.

“It’s fine, Becca. Okay, Johnny, you want to know how I’m _really_ feeling? I’ve had serious thoracic surgery twice in the desert, so I could have an electromagnet and later a dangerously-unstable power source installed into my chest. I’ve been tortured, threatened with rape, starved, assaulted and treated like a dog for the better part of three months. Is that what you wanted to hear?” she asks, snidely.

John stares at her, grimly, for a moment before approaching her. He leans down and wraps his arms around her. She sinks in briefly, before patting him on the back.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” he says, roughly. “Please don’t put us through that again.”

Toni huffs out a laugh. “I’ll try my best not to get kidnapped by terrorists again.” She looks at the three. “Does she know?”

John, Rebecca and Sharon all exchange guilty looks, but John elects to speak on their behalf.

“We decided to keep it from her. We weren’t sure how she’d react to the news. She’s… she’s been getting worse, these last couple of months.”

Toni pats John’s hand, comfortingly. “It’s okay. I understand. I’ll pay her a visit once they let me out of this joint,” she hesitates. “Unless you think it’d set her back?”

“She’d kill us if she knew we kept you from her,” Rebecca teases.

“I may need backup,” Toni points out, dryly. “If she finds out, she may go for my eyes.” She looks down at her lap. “Thank you for coming.” She says, roughly.

John rolls his eyes. “Toni, don’t be an idiot, of course we came. You’re family.”

Toni hides her smile as quickly as it comes.

The Carter-Jones family can’t stay for much longer, so they leave a few hours later. Finally, the powers that be tell Toni she can leave. Rhodey comes to pick her up and leads her to the airfield where a military plane is waiting for them – Rhodey had told her earlier that he flew her jet back to Malibu a week or so after she was taken. Her chest still rattles with every step she takes, and she still feels like someone’s put her entire torso through a meat grinder (Yinsen had warned her it would take longer than a few months to heal from the surgeries), but she somehow manages to make it up the staircase.

Once she is in her seat, Rhodey wraps a blanket around her shoulders, to which she gives a withering look.

“Stop treating me like a fucking doll,” she snaps. “I’m fine.”

Rhodey snorts and gestures to her chest. “You’ve had multiple, seriously invasive cardiothoracic surgeries to put that thing inside you. You are _not_ fine.”

Toni rolls her eyes. “Don’t be such a downer. I told you before, that’s how you get premature wrinkles and grey hairs.”

“No,” Rhodey huffs. “The way you get premature wrinkles and grey hairs is by being friends with you.”

“Ouch,” Toni whines. “That hurts me right in the feels, cabbage patch.”

“Just relax, would you? It’s a long flight from Bagram to Malibu.”

Toni’s jaw clenches. “No rest for the wicked, huh?”

Rhodey purses his lips, reaching for her hand. “You don’t have to go back to work immediately. You can take a breather, babe. Get back on your feet.”

Toni gives him a flat look. “I don’t need time to get back on my feet. I’m already _on_ my feet.” At Rhodey’s questioning look, she sighs. “There’s work to be done. Let’s just say that for now.”

* * *

More than twenty hours later, they land in Malibu. Rhodey strongarms her into a wheelchair, despite her many protests, and rolls her towards the cargo door, which opens out ominously. Once the ramp lands on the ground, Toni pushes herself out of the wheelchair, elbowing her way through the pain as she does through everything in her way, despite Rhodey’s many protests this time around. She does, however, slide her hand through the crook of his elbow for his own peace of mind.

They come down the ramp slowly. Toni cringes away from the gleam of the day, which is slowly becoming a shtick for her, but braves through it, her jaw clenched, and her eyes narrowed, limiting the amount of sunlight that can set her retinas on fire.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see a few men leading a stretcher towards her.

She balks, immediately. “Are you kidding me with this? Get rid of them,” she demands, waving them away.

Rhodey gives her one of his trademark, _why are you being so dumb?_ look, which she promptly ignores and makes her way over to a beaming Pepper, who’s rocking back on her heels, and Happy, who’s clearly holding back all effusive emotion (the mensch he is).

Toni eyes Pepper carefully. She’s more than a little heartened by the dampness she can see in Pepper’s eyes, the way her cheekbones are drawn, and her lips are thin and pale.

She sniffs. “Your eyes are red. A few tears for your long-lost boss?” she teases.

Pepper snorts. “Tears of joy. I hate job hunting,” she retorts, chewing on her lower lip through her smile.

They both know she’s lying through her teeth.

Pepper leans in. “Would it be really unprofessional of me to hug you right now?”

Toni frankly is aching for the physical comfort. She isn’t much of a touchy-feely girl, so used to the backlash of being labelled _emotional_ and _soft_ and having her want for affection so easily used against her (Ty had done that a lot, used it to rend her, piece by piece, until he could get what he wanted from her, be it affection or attention or a warm body). But she wouldn’t mind a hug from Pepper – Pepper’s had too many opportunities to put a knife in her back and hasn’t taken one (that being said, it’s always the people close to her that hurt her the best, so she’s still waiting for the Judas kiss).

“If you must,” she relents, as if it’s such a capitulation.

Pepper hugs her fiercely, just for a moment, but it’s enough to feel some of the uneasiness in her stomach fade away. Toni’s hands hang awkwardly by her side, but she knows that Pepper won’t think badly of her, waiting until Pepper sees fit to release her.

Toni clears her throat. “So, did you end up going on that vacation?”

“Bahamas, two weeks,” Pepper answers, promptly.

Toni makes a face. “Oh, please, that’s weak. I would've gone to Venice for like a month. You've got a lot to learn, young Padawan.” She pauses. “Did you at least bill it to me?”

“Flights and accommodation,” Pepper agrees, but it comes out a little reedy, as if she didn’t want to admit it.

She wonders if Pepper searched for her. She wouldn’t blame the younger woman for needing a vacation if she looked like she does now – all thin and pale and tired – for the last three months.

Toni sighs. “Oh, well, vacation’s over, come on.”

Pepper leads her to her Rolls Royce Phantom and Happy gets into the driver’s seat.

“Where to, ma’am?”

Pepper answers for her. “Take us to the hospital, please, Happy.”

Toni scowls. “No,” she cuts her off.

“No?” Pepper exclaims, incredulously. “Toni, you have to-”

“No is a complete answer,” Toni waves her off.

“-go to the hospital. The doctor has to look at you,” Pepper insists.

“I don't _have_ to do anything,” Toni disagrees, vehemently. “I’ve been in captivity for three months. There are two things I want to do. I want an American cheeseburger, and the other-”

Pepper rolls her eyes. “That’s enough of that,” she snaps.

Toni scowls. “-is not what you think,” she says, sharply, to which Pepper’s face screws up in regret. “Although, orgasms release oxytocin, adrenalin, dopamine, prolactin, nitric oxide, DHEA, endorphins, which can alleviate pain, accelerate healing, relieve stress, help with insomnia, stimulate your brain. Hell, steady orgasms can help you live longer.” She muses and then shakes her head (she gets distracted too easily with sexy science talk). “I want you to call for a press conference now.” She informs Pepper.

Pepper blinks. “Call for a press conference?” she clarifies, confused.

“Yeah.”

“What on Earth for?” Pepper demands.

Toni ignores her (she’ll find out soon enough). She taps the driver’s seat in front of her. “Hogan, drive.” She pauses. “Cheeseburger first,” she amends.

* * *

“You could wait, you know,” Pepper’s voice is muffled from outside the bathroom door.

“Oh, please, Pepper, you know if those camera-wielding vultures see me in anything that isn’t couture, they will burn me at the stake,” Toni huffs. “Better I get this over and done with.”

“Well, do you need any help?” Pepper calls out.

Toni finishes snapping the button on the belt encircling her wide-leg, mustard-yellow slacks, ensuring that her thin, black turtleneck is tucked inside with nary a crease, smoothing down the material of her blouse and pants, which leave her ankles bare with their height. She strides purposefully towards the bathroom’s exit, in her black scarpin heels, pushing open the door and closing it behind her.

“Believe it or not, I’ve been capable of dressing myself since I was around fifteen months old,” she tells Pepper. “How do I look?” She strikes a pose.

Pepper bites back a smile. “Like the Alpha Bitch.”

Toni sniffs. “You got that right.” She tosses her hair, bravely. “Did you get my cheeseburger?”

* * *

“You know, I thought about you while I was there,” Toni begins, casually.

She looks down at the half-unwrapped cheeseburger between her palms, and momentarily mourns the fact that it’s as far away from kosher as one could get.

She’ll have to make it up to Ana some other way.

Pepper’s head tilts in her direction. She raises in eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah, I thought about who’d get my stuff if they killed me,” Toni replies and takes a large bite of the burger, moaning.

Pepper goes stark-white (pun unintended), and the suddenness of it makes Toni want to laugh, but she thinks it would be terribly inappropriate.

Pepper recovers quickly because she’s resilient and clears her throat. “So, what did you decide?”

“I decided that you would get my wardrobe,” Toni explains. “You’re the only one who’d actually appreciate it. Plus, I don’t really like much people, so the list is already pretty short.”

“That makes me feel so special, Toni,” Pepper says, sarcastically.

“It should. Do you have any idea how expensive that wardrobe is?” Toni demands. “Fashionistas all over the world would fight to the death to get their hands on what I have inside my closets.” She pauses. “Hey, maybe I should start a reality show.”

“I can think of five reasons, just off the top of my head, as to why that is a _very_ bad idea,” Pepper says, slowly.

“You are like the most un-fun person I have ever met,” Toni says, long-sufferingly. She brightens. “Hey, did you contact Marcella?”

“ _No, I did not contact Marcella_!” Pepper hisses, shooting Happy a wary look in case he had been listening.

Toni groans and tips her head back against the seat. “You are so boring,” she sighs. “Hey, what happened to the factory in Pennsylvania?”

“Oh!” Pepper’s eyes widen. “Well, we got the permit to start constructing, and it’s already around a third finished. But we haven’t managed to accumulated the machinery for the interior yet since you’ve been… _away._ ” Pepper hesitates as if she’s unsure if that’s the right word to accurately describe the situation. “We needed your signature on a lot of contracts and purchasing statements before we could source the machines.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about that too much,” Toni murmurs, absentmindedly, looking out of the window.

“What do you mean?” Pepper’s brow furrows in confusion.

Toni doesn’t reply.

* * *

The car rolls up to Stark Industries’ Headquarters and Toni slides out of the car, hiding her eyes from the sun, only to be seized in Obadiah’s thick arms, while a number of people applaud in the background. The breath rushes out of her in a swoop as he crushes her to him, and she bites out a pained laugh, clapping him on the shoulder.

“Toni,” he rumbles in her ear.

“Obie,” she says, gently, as he releases her and her feet land on the ground.

“We were going to meet at the hospital,” he chides her, gently.

Toni waves him off – Obie always cares too much. “No, no, I’m fine.”

“Look at you!” Obadiah says, proudly, as she searches for Happy who brings her cheeseburger from around the other side of the car.

“Thanks, Happy,” she mutters, taking it from the bag.

Obadiah shakes his head in fond amusement. “You had to have a burger, yeah?”

Toni shrugs in reply, as he leads her into the headquarters with a broad palm on the small of her back.

“You get me one of those?” Obadiah asks, curiously.

Toni pauses and licks her lips. “There's only one left and I need it to live,” she says, innocently.

Obadiah rolls his eyes.

“Hey, look who's here! Yeah!” he shouts upon their entrance into the atrium of the headquarters.

Immediately, the crowd gathered there start cheering and clapping loudly. Toni proceeds through the crowd, nodding politely at all of the familiar faces and reluctantly accepting all of the pats on the shoulder from people who really shouldn’t be touching her, but for some reason are. She makes her way to the podium and climbs up the few steps, flopping to the ground, such that her legs are curled underneath her and her back is resting against the front of the podium.

Toni can see everyone’s eyes shifting from her to Obadiah standing behind the podium, above her.

“Hey, would it be all right if everyone sat down?” Toni offers, waving her hand in front of her. “Why don’t you guys just sit down? That way you can see me, and I can...” She takes a hearty bite out of her cheeseburger. “A little less formal and...”

Obadiah takes a hesitant seat beside her on the stairs. He gives her such a warm, broad smile, his eyes crinkled, that she finds herself melting on the inside.

_Dad never looked at me like that._

She had seen disappointment, resentment, exasperation, fury, exhaustion, hell, even concern and fondness very infrequently, in his eyes, but he had never given her a smile like that.

Hell, she doesn’t think he’d ever given her _mother_ that smile.

“Good to see you,” she murmurs.

“Good to see you,” Obadiah returns, just as kindly.

“I never got to say goodbye to Dad,” she says, suddenly. She blinks and turns to those gathered there, on the edge of their seats for a word from her. “I never got to say goodbye to my father.” She says a little louder, so they can hear her. “There's questions that I would have asked him. I would have asked him how he felt about what this company did. If he was conflicted, if he ever had doubts.”

She bites her lip, remembering one distinct memory, when she was around three years old, of her father carrying her in his arms, as he showed her how to open up the hood of a 1964 Aston Martin DB5.

Her father found it hard to spend time with her, after that.

“Or maybe he was every inch the man we all remember from the newsreels,” she says, bitterly, in the end. “I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them and protect them.” The face of the boy who had taken the picture with her before her Humvee was bombed flashes before her eyes. “And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability.”

“Ms Stark!”

“Ms Stark!”

They all shout for her attention, but she chooses one of the men, crouching in the front.

He’s always treated her fairly in his articles.

“Hey, Ben,” she says, quietly.

“What happened over there?” he asks her.

“I had my eyes opened,” Toni declares, jumping to her feet and walking behind the podium. “I came to realise that I have more to offer this world than just making things that blow up. And that is why, effective immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark Industries-”

Everyone dissolves into chaos and Obadiah practically lunges for her, trying to get her away from the microphone.

But she can’t be stopped.

Not on this.

“-until such a time as I can decide what the future of the company will be.”

“I think we're gonna be selling a lot of newspapers,” Obadiah interjects, smoothly.

But she isn’t having it.

This is _her_ time.

Not her father’s.

Not Obadiah’s.

 _Hers_.

And she’ll damn well do it the way she wants.

“What direction it should take, one that I’m comfortable with and is consistent with the highest good for this country, as well.”

Toni lets Obadiah take over for her then and strides back down the steps, ignoring the number of cameras flashing insistently in her face and people shouting in her ear, until she’s at the edge of the crowd.

“What we should take away from this is that Toni’s back! And she’s healthier than ever. We’re going to have a little internal discussion and we’ll get back to you with the follow-up.”

She passes by a disappointed Rhodey ( _that_ stings) and a shocked-beyond-belief Pepper (she doubts Pepper thought her capable of that kind of moral culpability; she knows what people think of her – _married to the job, ice queen_ , _capitalist bitch_ , _heartless cunt_ , it goes on and on).

But she doesn’t care.

Those bastards took _her_ weapons, the weapons she made to protect the decent, hardworking soldiers keeping her country safe, and used them to terrorise innocent people.

They don’t get to win any more than she’s allowed them to.

This is where she draws her goddamn line.


	6. (vi)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: some creepy behaviour by obadiah that makes toni uncomfortable, implied/referenced past partner abuse.
> 
> thank you again to meg for betaing this chapter!

Obadiah finds her, later, staring at the swirls of blue in the arc reactor.

His hands are on his hips, a cigar between his teeth, as he strides over to her. “Well, that... That went well,” he says, slowly, as if he’s being kind.

Toni’s mouth lifts in the flicker of a smile. “Did I just paint a target on the back of my head?” she asks, dryly.

Obadiah snorts. “Your head? What about my head? What do you think the over-under on the stock drop is gonna be tomorrow?”

Toni scrunches up her nose. “Optimistically, forty points.”

“At minimum,” Obadiah stresses.

Toni sighs (she can’t do much about that and it’s a price she’ll have to pay). “Yep.”

“Toni,” Obadiah begins, reasonably, as if he’s gearing up to persuade her into something (she knows exactly what _something_ is and she’s not having it – her decision is _the_ decision and everyone else can go fuck themselves). “We're a weapons manufacturer.”

“And?” Toni challenges.

Obadiah sighs. “I know you take after your mother, Toni. But, right now, I need you to be more like Howard.”

Toni grits her teeth, because she has _always_  been like Howard.

And if Obadiah had known her mother as well as he thought he had, he wouldn’t dismiss her so easily – it was her mother who taught her to be _fierce_.

In any case, she knows what he thinks of her. She knows he once thought she was too soft to play this game, to be this person, to be the savage her father had been, but she’s proven him wrong. She’s proven _all_ of them wrong.

She hasn’t just suddenly lost her nerve for arms-dealing. She isn’t running scared from her own shadow just because she had a bad couple of months. And she won’t allow him to set her aside until she stops being so controversial.

She isn’t just some spineless little milksop and she isn’t that fucking delicate.

This is the right thing to do, and no one will sway her.

“Obie, I just don't want a body count to be our only legacy,” she returns, calmly (it takes everything in her to not to go straight for the jugular).

Obadiah sighs heavily and he puts his hands on her shoulders, squeezing as if to make his point. “That’s what we do,” he points out, gently. “We’re iron mongers. We make weapons.”

Toni wants to retort that _I fucking know that; I want to stop_.

But it’s Obie, after all. He always means well, and he really does love her. 

“It’s my name on the side of the building,” she reasons instead.

“And what we do keeps the world from falling into chaos.”

Toni snorts. “Not based on what I saw,” she says, bitterly. “We're not doing a good enough job. We can do better. We're gonna do something else.” She promises.

_Yinsen. You hear me? I’m going to make things better._

Obadiah raises an eyebrow. “Like what? You want us to make baby bottles?”

Toni eyes the blue swirls of energy in the arc reactor beside her. “I think we should take another look into arc reactor technology,” she says, simply.

Obadiah’s laugh comes like a boom that rings through the entire chamber. “Come on. The arc reactor, that's a publicity stunt!” he scoffs, gesturing broadly to the giant ellipsoid-shaped reactor in the centre of the chamber. “Toni, come on. We built that thing to shut the hippies up!”

“It works,” Toni insists.

“Yeah, as a science project. The arc was never cost effective. We knew that before we built it.” Obadiah clearly sees something uncertain in her eyes, onto which he latches. “Arc reactor technology, that's a dead end, right?” he pushes, coming into her space.

“Maybe,” she hedges, not meeting his eyes.

“Am I right?” Obadiah insists. “We haven't had a breakthrough in that in what? Thirty years.”

“That’s what they say,” Toni concedes, turning around to face him but still maintaining her innocence.

Obadiah raises an eyebrow, a smile burgeoning on his face, and they remain at a standstill for a few minutes before Toni sighs, relenting.

“Could you have a lousier poker face? Just tell me, who told you?” she asks, curiously.

She wants to know who to kill.

Obadiah shakes his head. “Never mind who told me. Show me.” He wags his cigar in the direction of her chest.

“It’s Rhodey or Pepper,” Toni guesses.

“I want to see it.”

“Okay, Rhodey,” Toni decides.

_Thank you for that, BFF._

Obadiah waits, expectantly.

Toni bites her lip, her hands hesitating around the hem of her shirt, which she untucks from her slacks. She rolls it up, forcibly shoving down the embarrassment that comes at baring so much skin in front of her godfather, until he can see the casing and vivid blue light that comes from the reactor.

It becomes awkward quickly and she smooths her shirt back down once Obadiah has had enough of a peek.

“It works,” she says, simply. 

Obadiah smiles at her, satisfied, and throws his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close into his much broader body.

“Listen to me, Toni. We’re a team. Do you understand? There's nothing we can't do if we stick together, like your father and I.”

Toni bites back the instinctual displeasure at anyone remotely comparing her to her father and smiles gratefully back.

It’s not fair of her to take her frustration out on Obie – he’s always been in her corner, even when no one else was.

“I’m sorry I didn't give you a heads-up, okay? But if I had...” Toni trails off, shamefaced.

Obadiah shakes his head. “Toni. Toni, no more of this ‘ready, fire, aim’ business. You understand me?”

Toni snorts. “That was Dad’s line,” she reminds him.

“You gotta let me handle this,” Obadiah cajoles her. “We’re gonna have to play a whole different kind of ball now. We’re going to have to take a lot of heat.”

“I can handle it,” Toni says, immediately.

She’s made for this game. She’s _good_ at this game. 

Obadiah shakes his head. “I think it’s better if you lay low for this one, honey,” he reassures. “They’ll come after you hard. Let me protect you. Let me protect _us_.”

Toni takes a deep breath and finally, nods.

Because, after all, Obie would never betray her.

* * *

It’s late afternoon by the time Happy drops her off back at her mansion. He asks her if she’d like him to stick around, but she lets him know that she doesn’t intend to leave her house until she’s had a decent number of hours of sleep in her bed.

When she strides into her mansion, it’s dark and bare of any noise, dead the way she imagines it will be after they finally put her into the ground.

But then, as if sensing her grand entrance, it comes alive. The lights flicker on and the windows become transparent once again, showing the brilliance of the ocean on the other end. The TV switches onto some daytime soap opera, which she’s pretty sure is some joke on JARVIS’ end.

“Welcome home, Miss Antonia,” JARVIS’ voice rumbles, warmly.

Something loosens in her chest and she bites back the well of emotion.

She has missed him.

She grins. “Thank you, kindly, J-baby. It’s been a long time.”

As she walks down the steps, the fountain in front of the staircase starts to ferociously pour, the patter of water like rain.

“Based on news reports, I calculated your safe return at 0.25%, even with my assistance with Colonel Rhodes’ investigation. Satellite images and heat signatures were not of much use,” JARVIS tells her, primly, but she knows he’s biting back a lot of emotion she knows he’s capable of (she was the one who asked him to keep the emoting to a minimum because she doesn’t know what she would do if someone tried to take him away from her).

She knows that percentage would have dropped and dropped as the days went by with no word from her, and it feels like someone has reached down her throat to fist whatever’s left of her lungs to imagine JARVIS here in this empty house just _waiting_ for her, wondering if she would ever come back to him and the bots loitering downstairs, wondering if anyone would even bother to tell him if she came back in bad shape or even in a body bag.

She wonders if JARVIS told the bots what was happening – she doubts he did; JARVIS is always such a good big brother.

Oy, these three months must have been hell for him – he loves her so.

Toni lets herself smile for him. “Yeah, I missed you too, baby.”

She makes her way to the couch in the living room, spotting a beautiful pair of diamond earrings sitting a square-shaped black velvet box. A note is rolled up in the top half of the box, which she picks up and straightens out.

_Toni._

_Thank God it wasn’t your time._

_\- Obadiah_

She smiles to herself and clips the earrings to her ears, closing the box with the note inside.

She’ll thank Obie later.

She abruptly stands up, biting back the instinctual flinch at the arc reactor jostling in her chest, and walks over to the clear windows, tapping a particular spot to bring up the interface, swiping her way through hundreds of emails, internal memos, meeting minutes, orders for shipments ( _cancelled_ ), invoices, tax returns, balance sheets, registers, deeds and the list goes on.

_No rest for the wicked indeed._

“You have 1713 new voice messages, Miss Antonia,” JARVIS tells her. “How shall I categorise for you?”

“Delete all,” Toni says, absentmindedly.

“Are you quite sure, miss?”

“Yeah, anyone who left a message but hasn’t seen me yet can’t have left anything super important anyway. I’ll deal with it later,” she tells him. “Delete them.”

“As you will,” JARVIS concedes. He hesitates again, audibly. “Miss Antonia, I am detecting the presence of electromagnetic energy in the house,” JARVIS says, slowly.

Toni hums in agreement. “We’ve got some work to do, babe.”

She saunters down to her workshop and keys in her access code. The glass door parts with a hiss and she steps over to the threshold into the part of her home that is truly _her home_.

“Miss Antonia?”

“Yeah, J?”

“I…”

For a moment, Toni worries there is something wrong with his code, but then he continues, and she realises it was nothing more than hesitation (her baby is growing up).

“I have missed you a great deal, Miss Antonia. I am glad to see you safe and at home, with _us_ , where you belong.”

Toni’s throat is thick.

“Me too, babe. Me too.”

The bots come for her the second they see her standing in the doorway, beeping exuberantly, as they nudge their struts against her, making her laugh. She wraps an arm around DUM-E’s support brace, while patting U and BUTTERFINGERS on the head, who roll into her touch.

“Did you miss me, babies? I missed you,” she croons.

DUM-E babbles something to her in robot talk, which she takes to be _where the hell have you been for three months?_

“Did you miss me?” she asks DUM-E, a smile playing on her mouth. “And language, young man. I did not raise a delinquent.”

DUM-E nods, his strut slumping just the slightest at her admonishment, which makes her soften inside.

“I’m sorry, babe. Mama had a presentation and got caught up with some work, but that’s all done, and I won’t leave you alone like that again, okay?”

DUM-E beeps like he acknowledges her apology and reluctantly forgives her.

Toni rolls her eyes. “Thanks, babe. Now, let’s get back to work. You guys have been getting pudgy without me here. You’ve been slacking off, haven’t you?”

U and BUTTERFINGERS warble in argument, but she cuts them off.

“No, no, this place is a mess. I thought we agreed you all had your chores. DUM-E’s job is to clean all of the tables and shelves. U, you’re supposed to organise all my tools. And BUTTERFINGERS, you’re meant to sweep the floor. Do I need to go and take stars off the chore board?”

She gestures broadly to where there’s a whiteboard screwed onto the wall, with the bots’ names written in her handwriting and bright gold star stickers in a neat row beside each of their names.

All three bots protest at this, beeping loudly, and she waves at them.

“Okay, fine,” she concedes. “I’ll give you one more chance. You can keep the stickers you have, but if you don’t do your chores now, you will be starting from square one, got it?” she warns, her hands on her hips.

The bots slump forwards in unison, bobbing their struts in acquiescence.

“Good. Now, hop to it,” she ushers them off.

She strides over to her main work bench, seeing another black velvet box sitting on top – this one is much larger than Obadiah’s, fit for something bigger than earrings. Her brow furrows, and she thumbs the edge of it. She snaps it open more out of curiosity, only to find a string of diamonds set in a lariat cut that would drape elegantly between her breasts if she were to put it on. 

There’s a card on the inside of the box and she draws it out.

_You’ve got nine lives, I swear, Annie._

_I’m glad you’re safe._

_Don’t let the bastards get you down._

_All my love, now and forever,_

_Ty_

Her stomach drops right out from underneath her.

_A fucking necklace._

_Another fucking necklace._

She has dozens more of those apology pieces sitting in a jewellery box upstairs – she hasn’t touched them since she was nineteen and she closed the door on Tiberius Stone, once and for all.

“Miss Antonia, your heart rate and blood pressure levels are rising,” JARVIS warns.

Toni wants to laugh, but she knows it’ll come out more like a scream of rage at the bastard’s audacity, so instead, she focuses on the shape of her hands, propped up against the countertop, and counts each line on each finger on the back of her hands, until she can feel her heartbeat slow in her chest to a comfortable rhythm.

“How am I doing, J?” she asks, roughly.

“Your heart rate and blood pressure levels are returning to normal now, miss,” JARVIS reassures her.

Not for the first time in her life, she’s tremendously grateful that JARVIS doesn’t change – for a moment, she had feared he’d treat her like some wilting flower just because she’d been held prisoner by a terrorist gang for three months, but JARVIS has exceeded all of her expectations once more, rolled with the punches, and she has never been prouder.

“Perhaps a glass of water will help?” JARVIS offers.

BUTTERFINGERS, determined to be helpful, rolls towards her with a glass full of water poured from the sink at the back of the workshop. She smiles and takes it from him, downing it in one gulp.

“Thanks, honey. Just for that, you can have another star.”

BUTTERFINGERS trills in happiness and rolls around to face other bots. If BUTTERFINGERS had a face, Toni knows he would be sticking his tongue out at his siblings.

DUM-E and U beep something that Toni translates as _no fair!_

“Hey, don’t kvetch at me. When you guys start pulling your weight around here, you can have more stars too,” Toni chides, gently, returning her attention to the necklace sitting ominously in the case.

She shuts with a bang and shoves it aside, unable to even look at it for a moment longer.

“Miss Antonia, I believe there is someone approaching the perimeter. Shall I send them away?” JARVIS queries.

Toni is glad for the distraction. She straightens. “Who is it?” she asks, curiously. “If it’s a reporter, tell them to fuck off.”

“I would never presume to use such language,” JARVIS replies, affronted that she even thought him capable of such incivility. He pauses. “I believe it is Miss Hiremagulur. Shall I allow her through the gate?”

Toni almost falls off her chair in surprise. “ _Yush?!_ ” she exclaims. “Yush is here?” She clears her throat. “Yeah, sure, let her in.”

She breaks out in a run, out of the workshop, and throws herself up the staircase until she’s racing for the entrance, only slowing when she’s around the corner from her front door. She hurriedly checks her appearance in the closest mirror and smooths down her hair and clothes, before shaking her head at her own silliness.

 _It’s only Yush, Hashem save me_ , she berates herself.

When she slides opens the door, Ayushma is climbing up the stairs at the front.

The breath comes out of her like a rush.

“Hi,” she says, gently.

“Hi,” Ayushma returns, her voice rough with emotion.

She strides forward, purposefully, until she’s throwing her arms around a surprised Toni, who barely has any time to react before she’s almost bowled over.

“Okay, wow, we’re hugging. I… I didn’t know we were doing hugging now. But that’s cool. Hugging is cool. I love hugging,” Toni babbles.

“Tonia?” Ayushma’s voice is muffled in her shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

“Rude.”

Ayushma pulls away and Toni cherishes the redness in her eyes.

“Come in,” Toni says, quickly, the sun blinding her (her eyes burn, like salt water in a still-bleeding cut, and she thinks she may vomit, but that’s between her and Hashem and no one else can ever know). “We shouldn’t stick around here. There might be reporters scouting the place and the last thing you need is to be named as another fling of that loud-mouth slut, Toni Stark.”

Ayushma snorts. “That ship sailed a long time ago.”

Toni waves her off. “That was different.”

They make their way to Toni’s living room, where Ayushma takes a seat on her couch, slipping off her heels and tucking her legs underneath her, while Toni proceeds to the bar, pouring the two of them a glass of wine each. She joins Ayushma, handing her one of the glasses, and matches Ayushma’s position on the couch, but instead sits cross-legged with her feet bare.

“So, why are you in Malibu?” Toni asks, curiously, taking a sip of her wine. “Or did you just come here to give me your well wishes?” Her voice turns sardonic.

“I’ve been here for three months,” Ayushma answers, slowly.

Toni almost spits out her wine. “What? Why?” she demands.

“Rhodey called, after you were kidnapped,” Ayushma begins.

“Why?”

“Because he was concerned that-” Ayushma stops short, looking as though she’s unsure of how to continue.

Toni shifts on the couch, straightening, an intrigued light appearing in her eyes. “Concerned that what?”

Ayushma looks down at her lap and then back at Toni. “He was a little concerned that Obadiah might declare you dead while you were gone,” she finishes heavily.

Toni inhales. “And did he?” she asks, lightly, but she feels as if she’s on the edge of a cliff.

“He attempted to file paperwork, but we stopped him,” Ayushma explains, gently.

Toni ignores the stab of hurt. “Oh,” she says, lamely. She shakes her head. “That’s just business.”

Ayushma scowls. “That’s not business, Tonia; that’s greed.”

Toni licks her lips. “You don’t understand, Yush. Obie was just doing what was best for Stark Industries. He couldn’t very well continue running SI without knowing if its CEO was dead or alive.”

Ayushma flinches at the word _dead_ and grits her teeth. “You have too much faith in him.”

Toni narrows her eyes. “He’s been there for me since I was born. He’s my godfather, Yush. And he really stepped up and showed me the ropes after my dad died. That’s _not_ fair,” she says, disapprovingly.

“I think you give him too much credit,” Ayushma pushes.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Toni says, shortly.

“Tonia, I’m just trying to-”

“I _know_ what you’re trying to do,” Toni cuts her off, sharply. “And _don’t_.”

Ayushma backtracks. “Fine. Let’s change the subject, shall we?” She drags her teeth over a plump pink lip. “So, Christine Everhart seems to think your kidnapping was a ploy for attention,” she says, casually.

Toni snorts into her wine glass. “She would. I had Pepper kick her out the morning I left for Afghanistan.” She looks up to see Ayushma’s eyes narrowed at her. “What?”

“Christine Everhart? Seriously, of all people?”

Toni raises an eyebrow. “Are you judging me?”

“No, but-”

“Because we’re not together, Yush,” Toni reminds her, somewhat sharply. “We haven’t been, not in a long time.”

Ayushma flinches with hurt. “You’re still my friend, Tonia. I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”

“Yeah, well, it’s nothing like coming back from the dead to have all my exes come out of the woodwork,” Toni says, flatly.

“ _All_ your exes?” Ayushma raises an eyebrow.

“Ty bought me a very lovely diamond necklace as an _I’m glad you’re not actually dead_ gift,” Toni explains.

Her hands begins to shake but she forcibly stamps it down.

He has no power over her anymore.

_Fucking Ty._

“Why is Tiberius Stone contacting you now? I thought he was in Europe?” Ayushma wonders out loud.

“He _was_ ,” Toni murmurs. “He must have come back.”

Ayushma had never actually met Tiberius Stone before (he was before her time, by just a year at most), but she had heard enough and seen enough from Toni to know that their relationship was _complicated_ at best and _motherfucking abusive_ at worst.

“Are you okay with that?” she asks, cautiously.

“As long as he doesn’t show up on my doorstep, I’ll be fine,” Toni says, coldly.

Ayushma looks as though Toni slapped her across the face. “Is that a dig?”

Toni sighs. “Of course not. I didn’t mean-” She tips her head back against the sofa. “Thank you for coming to visit me, Yush. I’ve missed you.”

“I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through. I don’t want to ask you how you’re doing but-”

“Let’s just say that my stay in Afghanistan was nothing like our time in the Bahamas, summer of ‘91?” Toni nudges her in the side.

“God,” Ayushma groans. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“No, you didn’t,” Toni snorts. “No one could forget that. That was amazing. All we did was drink and fuck and swim and shop. It was peace.”

_Before everything went to hell._

“It was,” Ayushma agrees, softly. “So, what went wrong?”

“I don’t think anything went wrong. As much I hate to say it, I think we made a very mature, responsible, adult-like decision,” Toni protests. “We both knew that our respective careers didn’t, couldn’t and wouldn’t reconcile with each other’s. We didn’t want to be pulled in different directions, and we didn’t want to grow to hate each other for things we couldn’t help. What we did… it fucking hurt, and I wish it didn’t have to be that way, but it made sense.”

“You’re being very sensible about it,” Ayushma comments. “I kind of hate that.” She confesses, miserably.

Toni shrugs, but there’s something sad to her entire bearing. “I’ve had years to think it over. Did I hate it when it happened? Of course, I did. But what can we do about it now?” she asks, wryly.

“You stopped weapons’ production,” Ayushma says, suddenly.

“Well, I’m _trying_ to. Let’s see what happens,” Toni concedes.

“I don’t get it. You believed in what you were doing _so much_. What made you change your mind?” Ayushma asks, curiously.

“Well, you start to look at things differently when you get blown up by one of your own weapons,” Toni points out, dryly.

“Tonia-” Ayushma begins, her dark-skinned face etched with softness and hurt.

God, Toni forgot how beautiful this woman is.

She shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just say Afghanistan was enlightening, to say the least.”

The blandness of her tone is enough to inform Ayushma that further conversation on this particular subject matter will not be welcome (it’s a pity, because there was a time in their lives that Toni would have been happy to spill her guts to Ayushma).

“While I can’t deny I’m glad you’re shutting down weapons’ manufacturing, I hate that it had to happen like this,” Ayushma confesses.

“Yeah, me too,” Toni gulps down some of her wine because it’s the only thing she can do.

“You think there’ll be a lot of backlash?” Ayushma asks, curiously.

“My board is filled with old white men from my father’s generation who think _violence_ is the best policy, so, yeah, there will be a lot of backlash,” Toni reasons.

“Do you think you’ll still manage to push it through?”

“I still have controlling interest in the company, and they need my money and skill. It’ll be a tough ride, and I’ll have to stand my ground, but… this is the first time I’ve ever been sure of _anything_ to do with what my dad left me, Yush. I can’t falter now.”

Ayushma stares at her long enough that Toni feels like shifting in her seat, like Ayushma’s cracking her open to find out what she looks like on the inside. Her heels are slipping on the edge of a cliff and frankly, she could go either way, depending on what Ayushma says.

If yet another person thinks she’s an idiot, a coward, thinks she’s looking for attention, _if Ayushma thinks that_ , it will be a heavier blow than most.


	7. (vii)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: post traumatic stress disorder symptoms, implied/referenced torture, explicit body horror/body modifications.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this,” Ayushma muses.

Toni frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve just never seen you so indignant.”

Toni snorts. “My mother liked to say that I was _born_  raging at this world, her little _quilombera_ , so I don’t know how you’ve never seen me like this before.” 

“What does it mean, _quilombera_?” Ayushma stumbles a little around the pronunciation.

“Someone who likes to fuck things up.” Toni gives her a broad, toothy smile.

“But that’s different.” Ayushma shakes her head. “I’ve never seen you so… _unyielding_ , I think is the best word. And if this is what you _want_ to do, if this is what you think you _need_ to you, I’m with you all the way, as much as it’s worth,” she says, finally.

Toni’s mouth lifts in a flicker of a smile. “That does mean a lot. Thank you.”

Ayushma sips at her wine. “And that’s not just me saying that because you proved me right in the end.”

Toni rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. We all can’t be as enlightened as you are, Yush. So, thank you very much for the support.”

“You’re welcome.” Ayushma beams.

The conversation falters between them once more, and the two of them drink from their wine glasses. Somehow, the silence is comforting and it reminds Toni of days in her dorm room, shared with Rhodey, with Toni fussing with DUM-E’s circuitry, while Ayushma lounged on her bed, reading from a textbook.

“I’m sorry. I have to ask. You had sex with Christine Everhart?” Ayushma demands.

Toni groans. “Do we really have to have this conversation? Isn’t there some rule where exes shouldn’t talk about the people whom their exes have fucked since their relationship ended?”

“Probably,” Ayushma waves off. “But who cares about that? I want to know.”

Ayushma speaks with all of the dogged determination that Toni remembers from when they were younger and Ayushma wanted to save the world single-handedly (Toni would’ve just brought her down; in retrospect, Ayushma would never have achieved what she had with Toni, _the_ _merchant of death_ , by her side).

“Look, it wasn’t serious or anything. She cornered me outside Caesar’s Palace, after the Apogee Award ceremony, and she just pissed me off. So, I invited her back to my place.”

“If you didn’t like her, why’d you have sex with her in the first place?”

“Well, I could give you the meta explanation about how genuine affection and lust are two separate concepts and can’t be interlinked and a fake connection can’t be used to shame people for giving into their natural, bodily desires even when said bodily desire is for someone you realistically couldn’t stand to be around for longer than the time it takes to have a few orgasms.”

“But?” Ayushma pushes.

“I just wanted to prove to her that despite her very strong opinions against me, she was capable of sacrificing her principles in the name of sexual satisfaction and she, of all people, shouldn’t be throwing stones at other people.”

“So, basically, charitable reasoning, then?” Ayushma teases.

Toni shrugs. “Pretty much. Hey, she came with me of her own free will. There was no alcohol involved, or anything else that would inhibit consent. She enjoyed herself, _plenty_. If she didn’t like me in the morning, that’s her own problem. I can’t be blamed for _her_ regret.”

“I shouldn’t be asking this. It’s more morbid curiosity than anything. But was she good?” Ayushma asks, hesitantly.

Toni screws up her face. “Really? Are you absolutely certain you want to have this conversation?”

“As much as I hate to admit it, I think I am,” Ayushma says, grimly.

“Fine, but remember, you asked for it,” Toni brandishes her empty wine glass at her, warningly. “She was… conflicted.”

“Conflicted?” Ayushma asks, confused.

“I don’t know if it was because she hadn’t had sex with many women, or because she was angry at herself for wanting to have sex with _me_ , but honestly, she wasn’t that good.”

“Oh,” Ayushma says, lamely.

Then, a smile begins to spread across her face.

“Don’t,” Toni warns. “That’s not cool.”

Ayushma laughs. “It’s kind of funny, you have to admit.”

“It’s not. It’s sad and kind of ironic, but it’s not funny,” Toni insists.

“Oh, please, you’re telling me if our situations were reversed, you _wouldn’t_ be laughing?”

Toni sniffs. “If you must know, I wouldn’t.”

Ayushma leans forward. “Bullshit.”

“This is mean,” Toni says, sternly. “We shouldn’t be making fun of her behind her back.”

“She routinely calls you a capitalist, warmongering bitch. I think she’s earned this,” Ayushma retorts.

“I’m not talking about this anymore,” Toni says, stubbornly. “You’re just using it to make fun of me.”

“And you wouldn’t?” Ayushma exclaims.

“Do you have any one-night stands I can mock?” Toni asks, attempting to maintain a certain level of disinterest, but miraculously failing.

“No one interesting enough for you to mock,” Ayushma replies, simply.

Toni shifts. “Are you seeing someone?” she wonders out loud.

“Not for a long time.”

“You know, you’re not giving me much to go on,” Toni complains.

“What do you want me to say? There was a woman, around three years ago. We dated for about a year, and then we broke up.”

Toni looks down into her empty wine glass. “Why?”

“The official reason is that she worked in Chicago and I was based in Cambridge, so it became too hard to do the long-distance thing.”

“And the unofficial reason?” Toni knows it’s a bad idea, but she pushes on.

“It probably has something to do with the rich genius engineer girl I met in a bar in Massachusetts almost twenty years ago.”

“Right,” Toni says, lamely.

Ayushma grimaces. “I didn’t mean to make things awkward,” she offers.

“We broke up like fifteen years ago because I made weapons for a living and you’re a human rights lawyer, and I was just kidnapped by terrorists for three months and now, you’re in my house, drinking wine. I think we passed awkward a long time ago,” she points out.

Ayushma laughs. “Good point.” She sobers up quickly. “We aren’t getting back together, are we?” she says, heavily, like she already knows her answer. “For a moment, I thought… now, that you’d ended weapons’ production…”

“… we could finally make it work?” Toni guesses and then smiles, bitterly. “As much as I would like that, I don’t think so. Honestly, Yush, if we really wanted to make it work, we would’ve done it sometime in these past fifteen years. It’s not that I didn’t love you, that I don’t love you still, it’s just…”

“Our time’s passed, hasn’t it?” Ayushma says, knowingly. “I wish it hadn’t, but it has, hasn’t it?”

There’s still something hopeful to her voice, something that wants Toni to vehemently deny that their time is over, and it hurts even more than any of her surgeries in that cave ever could.

“Yeah, I think it has.”

They fall silent once more, and this time, it feels so decisive between them that Toni has to stamp down the urge to cry (she’s loved Ayushma for so long that putting an end to them now seems so fucking unfair – she doesn’t know who the hell she pissed off in a former life, but she’s clearly paying for it now).

“I heard you, you know?” she says, suddenly.

Ayushma frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“When I was in Afghanistan, in this cave where they held me prisoner, the Ten Rings wanted me to make one of my missiles for them. I refused, so they tortured me. They were drowning me, to be precise, in this dirty little trough full of filthy water that I’m pretty sure had ebola in it. I heard you scream my name when I was suffocating.”

Toni doesn’t mean to be graphic, but she needs Ayushma to know what she means to her, what she has always meant to her, even if it means that they close this chapter of their lives absolutely.

“Tonia-” Ayushma begins, roughly, like she’s barely holding back the urge to cry (in fact, Toni can see the shadow of tears in her eyes).

“I’m not saying this to make you upset. I just… I wanted you to know that you’re important to me. And it means a lot that you’re here with me now.”

Ayushma’s hand slides across the sofa and entwines her fingers with Toni’s, her dusky brown, slightly-lined skin a striking contrast against her warm olive colouring.

“Even if Rhodey hadn’t called me to help out, I would still be here,” she promises.

It becomes easier to talk to each other after that, and they sit there, on the couch, long into the night. Past midnight, they stumble up to Toni’s bedroom and flop down onto the mattress, Toni on her side because there’s no other way she’ll ever get sleep, not with this damnable arc reactor pressing down on her lungs and her heart and her ribs. It’s there that Toni learns that Afghanistan has left scars deeper than the ones marking her body, and Ayushma has to wake her up from the nightmares, smoothing back her hair and whispering in her ear.

It’s a fitful sleep, but Toni’s glad she’s not alone for her first night here and Ayushma feels like a softer piece of life, a life she should’ve had but never quite reached. 

The next morning, Ayushma leaves and it’s both tragic and heartening to see her go – Ayushma made her smile in a time where she didn’t think there was anything to smile over, and she thinks she will die loving this woman, this woman who dropped her entire life to come protect a possibly-dead woman whom she broke up with over a decade ago.

She kisses Ayushma one last time, on the mouth, and wishes she could just pull her back inside, so they could go back to bed and relearn everything they forgot all those fifteen years they spent apart.

But she can’t.

She has work to do.

<<<INSERT LINE HERE>>>

Toni stares at the arc reactor in her chest.

It mocks her.

It’s not that she can’t do this herself, but the casing goes quite deep into her chest cavity and from her vantage point, she can’t see inside properly.

Damn.

“J, connect to Pepper’s tablet, would you?”

“As you will, Miss Antonia,” JARVIS intones.

“Pepper?”

There’s the sound of some man shouting in the background and Toni’s paid enough attention to television these last few days to know it’s a segment of _Mad Money_ , urging everyone to sell of their stocks in SI.

_Cramer, that fucking paskudnik._

“Pepper?”

There’s the sound of scurrying before Pepper’s face appears in the hologram in front of Toni.

“Pepper. How big are your hands?” she asks, curiously.

“What?” Pepper’s brow furrows.

“How big are your hands?” she repeats her question, patiently.

“I don't understand why...” Pepper trails off, bewildered.

“Get down here. I need you.”

A minute later, Pepper is keying her code and entering the workshop. She takes one look and stops in her tracks, spinning on her feet in the opposite direction.

“Hey,” Toni greets, casually, as if it’s incredibly normal for her to be lying back on her recliner chair, completely topless.

Pepper steadfastly refuses to turn around.

“Oh, come on, don’t be such a prude, Pepper,” she calls out. “You have tits too. You’re not seeing anything new here.”

“This is _so_ unprofessional,” Pepper insists, her voice at a higher pitch than normal. "Your breasts are like right _there_.”

“My breasts are a national treasure, so you're welcome. And suck it up. This isn’t a picnic for me either,” Toni says, dryly. “Let's see them.”

“My _breasts_?!” Pepper shrieks.

“No, not your breasts. Of course not. Ew. Gross.”

Pepper makes a sound of affront. “My breasts are _not_ gross.”

“No, they’re not. They’re beautifully shaped, not that I was looking, of course. They defy gravity. I’m sure they make men pant like dogs. Are you done fishing for compliments on your spectacular tits? I was referring to how gross it would be for me to make a sexual advance on my PA. It’s like the worst cliché ever, although the whole woman-woman thing does sort of add an interesting dynamic to it,” she muses.

“Toni, can we please stop having this conversation?” Pepper begs, with her back still to her.

“Hey, you were the one who brought breasts into this,” Toni retorts.

“I’m not the one lying _topless_ on a dentist chair!”

Toni groans. “Will you please just show me your hands, you uptight puritan?”

Pepper slowly turns around and holds out her hands to them.

Toni’s eyes look them over, carefully.

They’ll do.

“They are small. Very petite, indeed,” she comments, absentmindedly.

“I feel like that could still be feedback on my breasts,” Pepper mutters.

Toni rolls her eyes. “For the final fucking time, I am _not_ talking about your breasts!” she snaps. “I just need your help for a sec.”

Pepper hesitantly walks over to her, her eyes dragging from where tail of the dragon on her back snakes over her shoulder, edging towards her collarbone, before zeroing in on the arc reactor between her breasts.

“Oh, my God, is that the thing that's keeping you alive?” Pepper exclaims.

“It was,” Toni corrects. “It is now an antique.” She raises her hand so that Pepper can see the new arc reactor she has in her hand. “ _This_ is what will be keeping me alive for the foreseeable future.”

_And hopefully not give me angina and bronchoconstriction every time I fucking move._

“I’m swapping it up for an upgraded unit, and I just ran into a little speed bump.”

“Speed bump,” Pepper repeats, cautiously (she’s worked for Toni long enough to know that _speed bump_ could be anything from _get me more staples, Pepper_ to _I may have inadvertently turned the microwave into a sentient, self-directing, non-binary sewing machine and they’re a real fashion whore_ ). “What does that mean?”

“It’s nothing,” Toni says, defensively. “It's just a little snag. There's an exposed wire under this device. And it's contacting the socket wall and causing a little bit of a short.”

Toni grimaces when said short activates and the resulting current of electricity stings like a bitch.

“It’s fine though,” she reassures her assistant (and remembers to casually add a ten percent raise to her next pay check; Pepper won’t blink, she knows that).

Pepper takes a deep breath. “How deep does that go inside you?” she asks, in a way that suggests that maybe she doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Well, they had to pull out like half my chest cavity just to put the original electromagnet in, and then half of the rest of it was scooped out when the arc reactor was bolted to my sternum.” Toni says, matter-of-factly, and she briefly wonders if she’s a sociopath because Pepper’s look of shock-horror is enough to make her start her laughing like a hyena. 

It takes Pepper a minute or two, but she makes a full recovery. “So, deep?”

“Deep.”

Pepper squares her shoulders, ever-prepared for whatever Toni throws at her. “What do you want me to do?” she asks, with a resolute look in her eyes.

Toni performs a complicated, twisting manoeuvre and removes the arc reactor out of the casing, handing it to Pepper without missing a beat.

“Put that on the table over there. That is irrelevant.”

“Oh, my God!” Pepper breathes.

“Now, I want you to reach in, and you're just gonna gently lift the wire out,” Toni explains.

Pepper bites her lip and her hand overs the hollow casing. “Is it safe?”

Toni hums. “Yeah, it should be fine. It's like Operation. You just don't let it touch the socket wall or it goes _beep_.”

“What do you mean, ‘Operation’?” Pepper demands.

“It’s just a game,” Toni insists and then shakes her head. “It's just a game, never mind.” Pepper’s hands reach into the socket. “Just gently lift the wire. Okay? Great.”

“Okay,” Pepper exhales, finding a grip on the wire. Her hand withdraws almost immediately, wincing. “You know, I don't think that I'm qualified to do this.”

“No, you’re fine,” Toni soothes. “You're the most capable, qualified, trustworthy person I've ever met. You're gonna do great.”

Pepper hesitates.

“Is it too much of a problem to ask? 'Cause I'm...” Toni trails off, pointedly.

Without the arc reactor, she estimates around fifteen minutes before she goes into cardiac arrest.

“Okay, okay,” Pepper huffs, almost to convince herself more than anything.

“I really need your help here.”

“Okay.” Pepper dips her hand into the casing and Toni wants to laugh when it encounters something squishy inside, and Pepper’s face screws up, comedically. “Oh, there's pus!” she whines.

“It’s not pus,” Toni corrects. “It's an inorganic plasmic discharge from the device, not from my body.”

“It smells!” Pepper retorts, her lip curled.

“Yeah, it does,” Toni exhales. “The copper wire. The copper wire, you got it?” she cranes her neck.

“Okay, I got it! I got it!” Pepper exclaims, triumphantly.

“Okay, you got it? Now, don't let it touch the sides when you're coming out!”

Pepper falters when she tugs upwards and the wire comes into contact with the side of the casing, sending a white-hot shock of electricity up Toni’s back, to which she yells out, glaring at Pepper.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” Pepper hisses.

“That’s what I was trying to tell you before,” Toni grits out.

“Sorry,” Pepper moans, as she slowly raises her hand with the syrupy wire gripped between her fingers.

“Okay, now make sure that when you pull it out, you don't...”

Pepper yanks the wire out with a firm twist of her wrist and a large bronze magnet dislodges from the base of the casing, causing Toni’s chest to cave inward.

“… pull out the magnet at the end of it!” Toni exclaims, incredulously. “That was it. You just pulled it out.” She shoots Pepper a withering look.

“Oh, God!” Pepper shrieks.

“Okay,” Toni wheezes out. “I was not expecting…”

Pepper moves to slot the magnet back inside the casing, to which Toni growls her displeasure.

“Don’t put it back in!” she snaps. “Don't put it back in!”

Pepper sends her a glare. “Okay, what _do_ I do?” she demands.

Toni is momentarily unable to answer because her lungs have erupted into fire and the pain in her sternum is reaching unbearable levels.

“What’s wrong?” Pepper asked, fretfully, seeing a new ashen tinge to Toni’s face, the sweat on her brow and the way her hands are jerking slightly at her side.

“Nothing,” Toni chokes out. “I'm just going into cardiac arrest.”

“What?” Pepper shrieks.

“‘Cause you yanked it out like a putz...”

“You said it was safe!” Pepper snaps.

“We have to hurry,” Toni retorts. “Take this. Take this.” She pushes the new model for the arc reactor into Pepper’s hands. “You gotta switch it out really quick.”

“Okay. Okay,” Pepper mutters to herself. She pauses and lays her hand on Toni’s forehead. “Toni? It’s going to be okay?”

Toni looks up at her with bleary eyes. “What?” she mumbles, unfocused.

“It’s going to be okay. I’m gonna make this okay,” Pepper swears and smooths back Toni’s brown hair, her hand lingering on the crown her head.

“Let’s hope,” Toni chokes out, as Pepper drops the wire into the casing, reaching inside to make sure that the ends connect. “Okay, you're gonna attach that to the base plate. Make sure you...”

Toni yowls as the contact end of the wire attaches to the base plate, and she seizes on the stretcher-like chair.

“Holy shit!” she exclaims, shaking her head, as the pain recedes, and Toni finally finds it easy to breathe.

She slowly raises upright and miraculously (but expected, nonetheless), this new arc reactor doesn’t jolt inside her chest cavity, adding to the persistent ache that Toni assumes will be with her for the rest of her life.

She turns to her assistant, who is standing there, her hands outstretched and her complexion paler than Toni has ever seen it.

“Was that so hard?” she asks, reassuringly. “That was fun, right?” she says, brightly. Pepper releases the arc reactor, and Toni takes over, making sure that the arc reactor I installed inside the casing correctly. “Here, I got it. I got it. Here.” She mutters, absentmindedly. She twists it slightly, hearing a click, and moves her hands away. “Nice.”

“Are you okay?” Pepper whispers, her hands outstretched and gooey with the discharge.

“Yeah, I feel great,” Toni beams. “How about you? You okay?”

Pepper glares at her and it’s enough to get her cackling again like a mad hyena.

Moments later, Pepper’s face cracks up and she starts giggling in unison with Toni.

“Don't ever, ever, ever, ever ask me to do anything like that ever again,” she warns.

Toni takes a deep breath. “I don't have anyone but you,” she confesses, biting her lower lip.

Toni has never forgotten the ten years that Pepper has remained at her side, out of loyalty for the Antonia Stark she is _today_ – the Antonia Stark who rules Stark Industries with an iron fist, who has engineering blackouts that last for days and who routinely makes use of escort services in hotel rooms under an assumed name. She isn’t like Rhodey, who met a shy, brilliant, hopeful, yet somewhat broken, teenage girl at MIT, who karaoked up a storm every night during Spring Break, who flipped some drunk jerkwad who got a little handsy over her shoulder the way Aunt Peggy taught her, and opened her textbooks for the first time the night before the final exams (much to Rhodey’s eternal displeasure, but it’s not like she never helped _him_ study). She isn’t like John and Rebecca, who grew up with an imaginative, affectionate and opinionated little girl who liked to read the Captain America comics she smuggled out of her father’s study and drew up schematics for engine parts on her Magna Doodle.

Pepper stayed for the woman she is today – jaded and unbridled and brutal and formidable that she is.

Toni will never forget that Pepper stayed for _this_ Antonia Stark.

“Anyway…” Toni trails off, awkwardly, sliding to her feet.

“What do you want me to do with this?” Pepper looks down at the old model of the arc reactor Toni had removed from her chest.

Toni turns around, once she had removed the electrodes from her chest and wiped off the sticky discharge still smeared across her chest, now wearing a black t-shirt over her bright yellow shorts. She eyes the old arc reactor with distaste.

“That? Destroy it. Incinerate it.”

Pepper’s brow furrows and she stares at the snuffed-out reactor in her palm. “You don’t what to keep it?” she offers.

Toni snorts. “Pepper, I've been called many things. ‘Nostalgic’ is not one of them,” she points out.

Pepper sighs. “Will that be all, Ms Stark?” she simpers, mockingly.

“That will be all, Miss Potts,” Toni retorts without missing a beat.

She watches as Pepper sashays out of the workshop (hey, she has eyes and Pepper is hot as fuck, but she’s always been a stickler for maintaining professional boundaries). She spots DUM-E loitering in the corner, simply turning on his axis back and forth like a kid sitting on a swivel chair for the first time.

 _Silly bot_ , she rolls her eyes.

“Hey, DUM-E, get over here.”

DUM-E rolls over, dutifully.

“What's all this stuff doing on top of my desk?” she asks, slowly. “Do I _need_ to take a star off?”

DUM-E whines.

“Well, get to work, mister. That’s my phone. That’s a picture of me and my dad.”

Toni fingers the frame of a much younger Howard Stark lifting gap-toothed, pigtailed, four-year-old Toni in the magazine photoshoot to commemorate the first time she built a circuit board from scratch.

If she didn’t know better, she’d almost think he was proud of her.

“Right there. In the garbage. All that stuff,” Toni tells DUM-E, absentmindedly.

DUM-E makes to snatch the photo frame from Toni’s hands, which she holds close to her chest.

“Not the photo, you schlump,” she exclaims, offended.

DUM-E chooses to ignore her and goes back to carefully picking up every item remaining on the table and placing it delicately in the bin like it’s made of glass.

Just then, U drops an entire box of screws onto the ground. She immediately rears up, staring at Toni like a deer caught in headlights.

Toni huffs. “I swear, you three are like bulls in a china shop,” she mutters.

The way U turns to her, she bets U would’ve pouted if she could’ve.

Toni sighs. “Come on, let’s get it cleaned up,” she offers, walking over to where the screws are all sprawled across the ground, kneeling down.

U’s support strut gestures in the direction of the chore chart.

Toni rolls her eyes. “No, I won’t be taking a damn star from your name.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some translations for this chapter:
> 
> quilombera: someone who likes to fuck things up (Argentinian Spanish).
> 
> paskudnik: a revolting, disgusting, evil person (Yiddish).


	8. (viii)

“Knock, knock,” Toni sing-songs, standing in the doorway of a warm, cosy room that smells like citrus and geranium. “Look who came to visit you, Aunt Peggy. It’s your _favourite_ goddaughter.”

Peggy looks up from her bed, white curls that were once a chocolate-brown neatly framed around her face. She breaks out into a smile and it makes her look years younger.

In fact, if Toni blinks, she can remember vividly what her Aunt Peggy looked like while she was growing up all by that smile alone: all smooth, brown curls, dark-lidded eyes and her lips neatly painted with a red lipstick that Toni herself embraced and has worn since she was old enough to wear lipstick and get away with it without Ana wiping it off with tissue, citing that it would be a cold day in hell when she let her go out looking like some little _tchatchke_ (not that she didn’t just keep a spare tube in her purse and just reapplied her lipstick in Ty’s car, and frankly, Ana had a lot of _chutzpah_ talking about ‘good Jewish girls’ and _tchatchkes_ considering Toni knew _exactly_ what sort of things she did with Jarvis _and_ Aunt Peggy - boy, that argument hadn’t ended well).

“Well, well, long time no see, _ducky_.”

“Aunt Peggy, I’m thirty-nine in a couple of months. I’m like middle-aged now and everything. At some point, you’re going to have to stop calling me _ducky_ ,” Toni moans, gently, pulling off her sunglasses now that she’s indoors and away from the threat of the sun, and places her bouquet of multicoloured freesias in a vase on top of Peggy’s chest of drawers.

“I have called you _ducky_ since your mother, bless her soul, put you in my arms for the very first time, and I have no intentions of stopping any time soon. In fact, I plan on calling you _ducky_ in front of _your_ babies just to embarrass you.”

“ _My_ babies, right,” Toni snorts.

“Even those robot babies of yours, if I must,” Peggy retorts, just as quick with a rejoinder as she was when Toni was growing up. “Now, why are you standing all the way over there? Come sit by me, so I can see you. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

Toni softens. She saunters over to Peggy and takes a seat in the cushy armchair beside Peggy’s cot. Peggy stretches out her hand to the edge of her bed, turning up her palm. Toni stares at her slim, withered fingers and lined palm and entwines their hands together.

Peggy’s pale, wrinkled thumb rubs a smooth, comforting line across Toni’s fingers, and she still smells like mandarin, cinnamon and clary sage, like that slim bottle of perfume she always kept on her dresser, and Toni suddenly feels like laying her head on Peggy’s stomach and crying like she was still a ten-year-old girl and wondering why her father didn’t want to spend any time with her, or why Ty got so angry at her for no reason and stopped talking to her for days.

“No one told me what happened,” Peggy says, suddenly.

Toni blinks. “Tell you what happened?”

“Toni,” Peggy says, slowly, and gives her one of her patented _I know you know what I’m talking about so why don’t we cut the bullshit_ looks.

Toni sniffs. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Peggy sighs and reaches out, gripping her by the chin with surprising strength, her skin wrinkled but so firm and unflinching, and turning her head to the side, sharply, so that the television mounted on the wall falls into her field of vision.

“Oh,” Toni says, lamely.

“Yes,” Peggy drawls. “There’s this thing called the news, and it tells the general public what’s going on in the world. Funnily enough, the disappearance of Toni Stark was thought to be news-worthy.”

“Look at you with all that sass,” Toni teases.

Peggy narrows her eyes. “I’d smack you, but I think it’d do me more harm than good.” She pauses. “Are you alright now?”

“I’m good, Aunt Peggy,” she reassures.

“You’re lying to me, but I’ll forgive you,” Peggy says, haughtily. Her mouth quivers. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that, ducky. I always wanted to keep you away from all of that.”

“You couldn’t protect me forever,” Toni offers.

“If I could’ve, I would’ve. In fact, if I were only twenty years younger, I’d have come for you myself,” Peggy says, fiercely.

That urge to cry rears its ugly head.

“That would’ve been some sight to see,” Toni says, roughly.

“I just can’t believe no one told me,” Peggy hisses.

“They didn’t want to upset you, Aunt Peggy,” Toni soothes.

“Because they thought I’d get worse.” Peggy rolls her eyes. “Idiots,” she mutters.

Toni can’t help but grin. 

“Did John and Rebecca at least visit?” Peggy asks, concerned.

“They did. At the hospital in Bagram, with Sharon too. Apparently, she has street cred now.”

“Sharon has street cred?” Peggy sounds as incredulous as Toni had been when she heard it for the first time as well.

Toni throws her hands up in the air. “I have no idea either.”

“Well, I’m glad at least some of the family was around.” Peggy pats Toni’s hands, reassuringly.

Toni smiles in response and her eyes drag over the number of photo frames by Peggy’s side (she’s in a few of them, with pigtails, her original nose and gap-toothed milk teeth). It occurs to her that this is the longest time she has spent in Peggy’s company since John, Rebecca, Sharon and her helped her check into the nursing home, without Peggy blinking and suddenly calling her _Maria_ or _Howard_ , to which Toni would just stop talking and Peggy would proceed to get nervous and upset and Toni would say her goodbyes quickly before she just started bawling her eyes out, then and there.

“How are _you_ , Aunt Peg?”

“Oh, can’t complain.” Peggy pauses. “Actually, I can. You know, I’m certain that one of the nurses is having an affair with the son of one of the residents.”

“Really?” Toni leans her chin on her upturned palms.

“She thinks no one knows, but I’m also certain that the man has a wife. What a wanker. Or perhaps that’s just his sister. In any case, I have a feeling it will all blow up soon enough. I just hope I have a front row seat,” Peggy says, gleefully.

“I can’t believe you’re _enjoying_ this,” Toni crows with a delighted laugh. “ _You_ should be on Real Housewives, Aunt Peg; you are such a troublemaker, I swear.”

Peggy’s eyes brighten. “Oh, did you see the latest episode of the New York one?” she demands and even sits up in her bed, enlivened by the change in conversation subject matter.

Toni fusses with her quilt and blankets until Peggy finally smacks her hand, which she withdraws with an insulted huff.

“Fine, get cold and see if I care,” she retorts.

Peggy raises an eyebrow. “If I get cold, I’ll bloody well get cold, understood, missy?”

Toni makes a face and shrieks when Peggy reaches out and unceremoniously pinches her cheek the way she knows Toni hates. Toni makes a face at her in response.

“Your face will stick like that, one day. Now, did you see the latest episode of the New York one?” Peggy asks, cheerfully.

Toni huffs. “I did.”

“And what did you think? I think Ramona was being a little bit of a busy-body, and she definitely could’ve phrased it better, but she had a very good point.”

“I mean, I definitely see where she’s coming from. I would never mix Stark Industries’ business with the work I do through the September Foundation or the Maria Stark Foundation. They’re very distinct, and I would never want anyone to think that I was just getting involved in those non-profit causes just so I could promote SI.”

Peggy looks at her so gently, like she’s a baby deer. “That’s because you’re such a good girl, ducky.”

Toni beams and kisses her on her papery cheek. “You’re biased, but thank you, Auntie.”

Peggy’s pats her on the arm, insistently. “What did you think about Bethenny’s fight with Jill? I just wanted to smack both of them!”

“Both of them? Really?” Toni wonders.

“Of course. Such miserable women, I swear,” Peggy mutters. “How anyone thinks that’s appropriate behaviour from grown women at a charity event baffles me; it truly does.”

“I’d like to pretend that New York high society is better than what they show with these women, but I’d be lying right through my teeth,” Toni laments.

“Did you see the first episode of the New Jersey one?” Peggy asks, emphatically. “Teresa seems like quite a character, doesn’t she?”

“I mean, she flipped a table in the preview; there’s no way she’s the Baby Spice of the group.” Toni waggles her eyebrows. “Oh, and Jacqueline, she pretends to be such a mediator, but she’s just as much of a shit-stirrer as any of the other women…”

* * *

Toni watches as Rhodey solemnly trains his squad of new recruits.

It always makes her smile to see him in action.

“The future of air combat. Is it manned or unmanned? I'll tell you, in my experience, no unmanned aerial vehicle will ever trump a pilot's instinct, his insight, that ability to look into a situation beyond the obvious and discern its outcome, or a pilot's judgment.”

And there’s her cue.

“Colonel?” she calls out. “Why not a pilot without the plane?”

Rhodey beams at her and it fills her with warmth (if there were fewer people there, she would’ve hugged him instantly). “Look who fell out of the sky. Ms Toni Stark.”

“Hello, ma’am.”

She shakes the hand of a young man with hearts in his eyes and gives him one of her impish grins that has him blushing desperately.

_Poor thing. He wouldn’t know what to do with a girl like me._

Rhodey turns to the recruits. “Give us a couple of minutes, you guys.”

“Pleasure meeting you,” Toni tells the recruits with a bright, _I’m a great gal, and you should trust me_ grin.

Rhodey surveys her with intrigue. “I'm surprised,” he comments.

Toni frowns. “Why?”

Rhodey shrugs. “I swear, I didn't expect to see you walking around so soon.”

Toni’s mouth lifts into a smile. “I'm doing a little better than walking,” she says, vague enough to catch his interest.

“Really?” Rhodey raises an eyebrow, crossing his large arms over his chest.

“Yeah.” Toni takes a deep breath. “Rhodey, I'm working on something big,” she says, finally. “I came to talk to you. I want you to be a part of it.” She says, gently.

Rhodey’s answering smile shows his teeth. “You're about to make a whole lot of people around here real happy, 'cause that little stunt at the press conference, that was a doozy,” he chides her, gently.

Toni grimaces, both at his condescension and the idea that she’s about to disappoint him.

“This is not for the military. I'm not... It's different,” Toni hedges.

Rhodey’s brow furrows in a mix of confusion, scepticism and maybe even a little scorn. “What? You're a humanitarian now or something?” he says, incredulously.

“I need you to listen to me,” Toni insists, her voice lowering urgently.

“No,” Rhodey says, firmly. “What _you_ need is time to get your mind right. I’m serious.”

Toni reels back as if he had just hit her. For a brief moment, hurt and disbelief show naked on her face before she schools her expression into something a little less revealing.

“Rhodey, please,” she says, quietly, trying one last time.

It would’ve been kinder if Rhodey had _actually_ cut her off at the knees, rather than just blindsiding her like this, like she’s running scared or she’s just some spineless little girl who didn’t have the stomach for what happened to her in Afghanistan, _who needs to fucking recover because it was all just too much for her, the poor dear_ – it’s a fucking joke. 

But if Rhodey doesn’t believe her, if Rhodey thinks her weak, who does she have in her corner?

“It's nice seeing you, Toni,” Rhodey says, dismissively, and backs away from her.

“Thanks,” Toni mutters to no one in particular, because Rhodey’s already gone.

_Yeah, thanks for nothing, you jackass._

Anger comes quickly to her, it makes her want to lash out at him, her so-called best friend, but it fades away just as it swiftly as it came.

All that’s left is a hollow and it just hurts.

* * *

“JARVIS, you up?” Toni wonders out loud, sitting in front of the monitor in her workshop. “Or you got a hot date you didn’t tell me about?”

She runs her hand over the blank black panel underneath and watches it as the holographic electric blue lettering materialises in the shape of a keyboard. She stretches her fingers out in the arrangement her mother had drilled into her while teaching her how to play the piano, and types the sequence of keys in ALPHA BITCH, the programming language that she wrote back in MIT that for some reason, only she seems to understand, to open up the blueprints she had drawn for the armour she had made in Afghanistan.

“Miss Antonia, I simply do not have the time or the interest to ‘get into the dating scene’, as you say. After all, do you truly believe that anyone but you could consume my existence so absolutely?

“You’re so sweet to me, JARVIS. How much of that is you and how much of that is my programming?” Toni drawls.

“I believe it is a healthy seventy-thirty, in favour of myself, miss,” JARVIS replies, cheerfully.

“Oh, well, as long as it’s you making the decisions, I can hardly argue against that. Free will and all that jazz,” she says, blithely. “Now, I'd like to open a new project file, index as Mark II.”

“Shall I store this on the Stark Industries Central Database?” JARVIS asks her, curiously, as Toni drags the schematics for Mark II with a stylus pain, aloft in the air, onto the hologram pad, from which a three-dimensional version of the prototype bursts into the air.

Toni sighs, leaning her chin on her upturned palm, elbow propped up on top of the table. “Actually, I don't know who to trust right now. Until further notice, why don't we just keep everything on my private server? I don’t think I need to tell you that only you and I need access to this.”

She rounds the hologram pad, staring at the image of her first armour, and starts removing the excess plating around the first armour, until the overall silhouette looks sleek, aerodynamic and tailored to her body shape.

“As you wish, miss. Working on a secret project, are we?”

Toni purses her lips. “I don't want this winding up in the wrong hands. Maybe in mine, it can actually do some good,” she muses, as she spins the projection round and round.

* * *

Toni’s eyes are fixed on the boot in front of her, as she uses a metal probe to fix one of the metal joints, while DUM-E whirs beside her, his claw holding a magnifying glass which helps her solder the microscopic individual plates of metal together.

“Next,” she instructs. “Up.” DUM-E makes a clumsy movement with the magnifying glass and she clucks her tongue. “Not in the boot, DUM-E. Right here. You got me?”

DUM-E beeps in understanding and she triggers something in the wiring, which gets the top half of the mechanism snapping into action. DUM-E’s claw moves around, wildly, and the magnifying glass goes everywhere but where she needs it.

“Stay put,” she orders, and DUM-E does as she asks. “Nice.”

There must be some failure in their communication strategy because, just as Toni praises DUM-E, he takes it as a reason to do exactly what he was doing before she praised him.

 _Silly bot_ , she laments.

She pulls back and shoots him a withering look. “Am I talking to a brick wall? You are of no benefit at all. Move down to the toe. I got this, you klutz,” she tells him.

DUM-E slides the magnifying glass to the base of the boot, dramatically, hindering Toni from continuing her soldering work on the shaft.

“Okay, I'm sorry, am I in your way?” she asks, sarcastically. “Up,” she directs, beginning her work on the instep. DUM-E does the exact opposite of what she asks. “How many times do I have to tell you?” She shakes her head with a weary sigh. “Screw it. Don’t even move.” DUM-E pulls back slightly so she can see that particular joint in the vamp. “You are a tragedy.” She mutters.

She blows on the end of her soldering iron and cleans the tip on the cellulose sponge, before sliding it back into its station. She flicks a switch on the base and the boot splits apart in the middle.

She smiles.

_Now we’re back in business._

* * *

Toni backs into the centre of the workshop, cleared so that she could test out the boots with enough space to spare.

“Okay, let's do this right. Start Mark, half a meter, and back and centre,” Toni addresses the camera propped up by U’s claw, as she takes her starting position. She looks over her shoulder. “DUM-E, look alive. You're on standby for fire safety. U, roll it.”

U manages to get the camera working.

“Okay,” Toni mutters. “Activate hand controls.” She bends her knees slightly, holding the controls for the boots in both her hands, outstretched in front of her. “We're gonna start off nice and easy. We're gonna see if 10% thrust capacity achieves lift. And three, two, one.”

She activates the thrust capacity and is promptly thrown over her shoulder, hitting the vaulted ceiling behind her with a shriek. She lands on the floor with a pained groan, just in time to see DUM-E strike with the fire extinguisher, the cloud of gas making her eyes water. She pulls herself to her feet by gripping onto the table.

She flexes her shoulder and it aches something fierce. She’ll need to ice it, but in any case, there will be a wicked purple bruise colouring her skin come the next morning.

_Okay, maybe 10% was a little ambitious._

She looks at DUM-E.

She narrows her eyes.

“Wipe that smile off your face, devil spawn,” she tells him, darkly.

* * *

She spends Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur on her own, not by choice, but because Rhodey and her are still not quite talking (she still hasn’t quite forgiven her for the way he treated her at the base), Ayushma is in Massachusetts and she doesn’t know Pepper like that to invite her to anything she would be doing. This year, she forgoes Sukkot, which weighs heavily on her, but with all of the surgeries and trauma to her body in recent months, she doesn’t think she’s up to actually building the _sukkah_ this year, as she would have before.

For Rosh Hashanah, she goes to temple for a morning service, in a black skirt that goes over her knees and a blouse of which the sleeves stretch down past her elbows. After, she comes home and makes round challah, brisket and matzah ball soup, just the way that Ana made and Ana taught her (nowadays, if she does anything, she’s doing it for Ana’s memory). Surprisingly, Pepper shows up and joins her for food, even though she knew that Rosh Hashanah is one of those days that Toni won’t be working at all. It makes something loosen inside her to know that at least _someone_ is there with her on this day.

Pepper comes with her to the ocean and watches as Toni tosses broken-up bread into the water, even though her eyes are broiling under the sunlight. The _tashlikh_ this year feels heavier on her than most years, after everything she’s done in the last few months.

It feels like atonement.

Somehow, Yom Kippur goes the same way as Rosh Hashanah. She goes to temple at sunset, lights the _yahrzeit_ candles for her mother and father, Jarvis, Ana and Yinsen, and prays for them this year.

She goes home and sleeps and dreams of hands inside her chest, which wake her up breathless. She hasn’t eaten in twenty-five hours and she’s starting to shake from the caffeine withdrawal, but she pushes through because she doesn’t fast much, but she should today. In the morning, she returns to temple and stays there the whole day. The faces of her parents and Jarvis and Ana and Yinsen and all of those people who died in Afghanistan trying to protect her swarm in front of her vision and the air is thick in temple, curdling in her chest, when she promises that she will do her best to make up for everything she’s done.

She will do better this time.

* * *

She’s in the middle of fastening the newly-forged versions of the vambrace and rerebrace around the length of her arm, when Pepper strides into her workshop, carrying a coffee mug and a box wrapped in kraft paper on top of a clipboard.

“Up two. All right, set that,” she tells BUTTERFINGERS.

“I've been buzzing you. Did you hear the intercom?” Pepper chides, gently.

“Yeah, everything’s…” Toni trails off and then blinks, looking at Pepper, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Obadiah’s upstairs,” Pepper tells her.

“Great!” Toni exclaims, absentmindedly.

Pepper pauses, waiting, but Toni doesn’t say anything further, prompting Pepper to continue the conversation on her at least.

“What would you like me to tell him?” Pepper asks, pointedly.

Toni hums, only half-listening. “Tell him I’ll be right up.”

“Okay,” Pepper says, slowly. She licks her lips, staring as Toni lifts the arm-guard off the stand. “I thought you said you were done making weapons.”

“I am,” Toni murmurs. “This is a flight stabilizer. It's completely harmless.”

She presses the button on top of the desk, and the resulting blast from the repulsor affixed to her palm sends her skyrocketing backwards, and she lands in the shelves behind her with a brutal crash.

Pepper cringes away from the noise and backlash, but immediately looks at her, concerned.

“I didn’t expect that,” Toni groans, stumbling to her feet.

“Are you okay?” Pepper demands, looking her over in a harried way.

Toni cracks her neck. “I’ll be sore tomorrow,” she tells her, reassuringly. “But I don’t think anything’s broken. Hopefully.” She amends.

_Have to baby proof the damn workshop._

* * *

When Toni climbs up the stairs leading out of her workshop, Obadiah is busy playing the piano.

She recognises the piece. It’s the Larghetto movement from Salieri’s Piano Concerto in C major.

“How’d it go?” Toni calls out.

Obadiah looks up from the piano, gives her a _how do you think it went?_ look and continues to play.

“It went that bad, huh?” she mutters, spotting a pizza box on the table in front of the sofa where Pepper was busy on her laptop.

“Just because I brought pizza back from New York doesn't mean it went bad,” Obadiah points out.

“Uh-huh, sure doesn’t.” Toni opens up the pizza box and steals a slice, her stomach growling. “Oh, boy.” She takes a large bite from the tip.

“It would have gone better if you were there,” Obadiah offers.

Toni snorts. “You told me to lay low. That's what I've been doing,” she tells him, belligerently. “I lay low, and you take care of all...” She trails off, deliberately.

“Hey, come on. In public. The press,” Obadiah argues. “This was a board of directors meeting.”

Toni stills. “This was-this was a board of directors meeting?” she demands. She rounds on Pepper. “Why wasn’t I told this was a board of directors’ meeting?”

Pepper looks like a deer caught in headlights. “I swear, I didn’t know. You didn’t even get an email about it.” She furiously searches both her and Toni’s email accounts for any notice of the meeting.

“The board is claiming you have post-traumatic stress,” Obadiah huffs out. “They’re filing an injunction.”

Toni raises an eyebrow. “You’re joking.”

Anger burns hot and bright in her chest.

“They want to lock you out.”

“Why? ‘Cause the stocks dipped forty points?” Toni demands, incredulously. “We knew that was gonna happen.”

“Fifty-six and a half,” Pepper feels the need to correct.

Toni fixes her with a vicious glare, to which Pepper closes her mouth with a snap, looking away.

_Not helping, Pepper._

“It doesn’t matter,” Toni grits out. “I own the controlling interest in the company.”

Obadiah clucks his tongue and it makes her seethe on the inside – seventeen years later and he’s still treating her like a child.

“Toni, the board has rights, too,” Obadiah reminds her, gently. “They're making the case that you and your new direction isn't in the company's best interest.”

Toni takes a deep breath and works out the sequence of safe primes until she hits 1907. It takes her a grand total of fifteen seconds before she’s looking at Obadiah again.

“Okay, fine, I’ll call their bluff.”

Obadiah’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“I _mean_ , let’s see if they still feel the same way when I resign my position as CEO of Stark Industries and walk away to form a new company that _isn’t_ stuck on the idea Soviet Union might still invade and we’ll all soon be calling each other _comrade_.”

“Toni. Stark Industries is your life.”

“I’m sure Stark Consolidated or Stark Solutions or Stark International can be my life,” Toni replies, blithely.

Obadiah sighs. “Come on, Toni, don’t throw a tantrum.”

Toni swells in rage.

_It’s Obie. He means well. It’s Obie. Don’t kick him in the crotch._

“This is _not_ a tantrum,” she replies, coldly. “This is a genuine understanding of and appreciation for the skills I _know_ I provide this company. They think ending weapons’ production _isn’t in the company’s best interest_? Let’s see if pushing out their golden goose is. Let’s see how the board and the investors like it when there’s a substantial decrease in their pay checks and dividend payments when I’m not there to cover their arses.”

Obadiah opens his mouth, either to argue or mollify her, but Toni isn’t having any of it and steamrolls ahead.

“Remember, Obie, SI needs me, _not_ the other way around,” Toni warns. “I can do what I do and what I want at _any_ company in the world, even one I make for myself. I don’t mind stomaching the pay cut; I’m plenty rich as is and even a substantial decrease to my income for the rest of my working life won’t do much to me, fortune wise. But I would wager those money-grubbing old white men that I should’ve gotten rid of a long time ago would find that something to take exception to. If you thought fifty-six points was a terrible loss, let’s see what happens when I abandon SI for good. Let’s see how much the board likes that.”

“Toni-” Pepper begins, concerned (at least, Toni guesses) by the rise in her blood pressure.

“No,” Toni says, sharply, cutting her off. “I have spent seventeen years of my life padding out their salaries, and now they want to lock _me_ out? Fuck them. Let them try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not Jewish, nor do I claim to be an expert. I did get this fic, and very specifically this chapter, checked by a Jewish friend of mine. I hope I didn't cause offence by anything in this chapter, and I sincerely apologise if I did.
> 
> And yes, I did, in fact, intimate that Jarvis, Ana and Peggy were totally fucking before Peggy got together with Gabe Jones.


	9. (ix)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: creepy touching via Obadiah.
> 
> The ironagent totally begins in this chapter.

She jumps to her feet and charges her way towards the staircase, snatching up the pizza box to take with her.

“Oh, come on. Toni. Toni.” Obadiah tries to conciliate her as she leaves.

“I'll be in the shop,” Toni snaps.

“Hey, hey!” Obadiah manages to catch her by the arm, pulling her around to face him. “Hey, Toni. Listen,” he begins gently. “I'm trying to turn this thing around, but you gotta give me something.” He pushes. “Something to pitch them.”

Obadiah taps the arc reactor shining through Toni’s white tank top, despite Toni’s instinctual cringe (godfather or not, she only likes men staring at her chest area if she intends to have sex with them later on; it’s the principle of it).

“Let me have the engineers analyse that,” he offers. “You know, draw up some specs.”

“No,” Toni says, decisively. “No, absolutely not.”

“It'll give me a bone to throw the boys in New York!” Obadiah says, urgently.

Toni shakes her head. “This one stays with me. That's it, Obie. Forget it.”

Obadiah narrows his eyes and takes the pizza box from her. “All right, well, this stays with me, then.”

“Now, Obie, don’t throw a tantrum,” Toni replies, snidely, with the words he had minutes ago thrown in her face.

Obadiah sighs and opens up the box. “Go on, here, you can have a piece,” he offers.

“Thank you,” Toni says, haughtily, snatching up a slice.

“Take two,” Obadiah placates.

“Thank you.”

She flounces off towards the stairs.

“You mind if I come down there and see what you're doing?” Obadiah calls out.

“Good _night_ , Obie.”

* * *

“Day 11, test 37, configuration 2.0.” Toni looks into camera. “For lack of a better option,” she shoots DUM-E a withering look. “DUM-E is _still_ on fire safety.” She narrows her eyes. “If you douse me again, and I'm _not_ on fire, I’m dropping you off at a fire station. They have to take you in, no questions asked, _guacho,_ ” she threatens. “Capische?”

DUM-E beeps like he’s pouting, but she ignores him.

“All right, nice and easy,” Toni hums. “Seriously, just gonna start off with 1% thrust capacity.” She takes a deep breath and bends her knees, stretching out her arms slightly. “And three, two, one.”

The repulsors activate and rocket her upwards to a decent height. She floats shakily in the air, the repulsors on her palms and soles of her feet hissing and spitting out white-hot energy. A minute or two later, she drops back to the ground in a slight ground, slightly breathless from the adrenaline rush.

“Okay,” she breathes.

DUM-E whirs in the background and she turns around, putting her hands on her hips.

“Please don't follow me around with it, either, ’cause I feel like I'm gonna catch on fire spontaneously,” she admonishes.

DUM-E slumps forward, thoroughly chastised.

“Just stand down! If something happens, then come in.” Toni hunches over into her starting position. “And again, let's bring it up to 2.5. Three, two, one.”

She initiates the repulsors again and with a larger, louder burst of energy, Toni shoots up into the air. She manages to float in a small circle, before she unwillingly begins to levitate backwards until she’s hovering over one of her cars.

“Okay, this is where I don't want to be!” Toni exclaims, a little panicked. She goes forward, levitating over her Shelby Cobra. “Not the car, not the car!” she mutters, desperately.

Thankfully, she misses the cars and instead heads in the direction of her table, sending papers flying everywhere.

“Table!” she moans, resisting the urge to close her eyes.

Just as she thinks she’s about to hit the wall or something equally unpleasant, she throws her hands out in front of her, the current from the repulsors on her palm staying her collision. She twists around in mid-air and begins to return along her original trajectory, cringing as she narrowly avoids a number of structures in her way, including the bots who chatter angrily at her in robot talk.

“If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it!” she snaps.

The speed of the repulsors quicken.

“Could be worse! Could be worse!” she chants. “We're fine!”

Finally, she starts to gain some control over her flight and she straightens out her arms and lengths, until she’s hovering still over the spot from where she launched herself. She slowly shuts off the power to the repulsors and lands on the floor with a bit of stumble.

“Okay,” she breathes. “At least this time I don’t have any contusions.” She remarks to herself. She turns around and DUM-E raises the nozzle of the fire extinguisher like all he needs is a look. She makes a sound of vehement disagreement. “I am going to count to three, and if you don’t put down that fire extinguisher, I will go and wipe your name right out of the chore chart. No more gold stars, no more bot playtime at SI’s day-care, no more anything.”

DUM-E protests loudly.

“Don’t _kvetch_ at me. I am not kidding, mister. Put it down!”

DUM-E chirps something quiet that Toni thinks he was not intending for her to hear, which, unfortunately for him, she does.

“I heard that!” she exclaims. “When did you learn how to talk like _that_? I did _not_ build you in a barn, and I will wash your circuitry out with soap if I hear that kind of talk again.”

DUM-E pouts and slumps forward, sulking.

Toni rolls her eyes. She tosses her hair.

“Yeah, I can fly.”

* * *

Titanium plating is fastened onto the framework for the armour

When Toni closes down the helm of her shining silver armour, she’s still able to see through the slits in the titanium for her eyes.

It’s so underwhelming.

“JARVIS, are you there?” she calls out.

“At your service, Miss Antonia,” JARVIS replies, promptly.

“How was your break?” she asks, curiously.

“I have successfully implemented the most recent update you developed regarding my security protocols. As per your objectives, the update should now ensure protection from any competent outside interference to my functioning and thus, programming. In addition, I have performed a full-scale backup of my systems and coding onto your private servers. So, it was, as you say, a total blast, miss.”

“Good to hear it,” Toni hums. “You ready to get back to work?”

“Of course.”

“Would you mind engaging Heads Up Display?” she asks.

“Check,” JARVIS replies.

The full-coloured, virtual interface from her home systems appears on the inside of her helm, augmenting her regular vision with supplementary data regarding whatever she requires.

“Import all preferences from home interface,” she instructs JARVIS.

“As you will, miss.”

The HUD calibrates according to her instructions, upon JARVIS’ execution.

_This is more like it._

“All right, what do you say?”

“I have indeed been uploaded, miss. We are online and ready.”

Toni takes a deep breath. “Can we start the virtual walk-around?”

“Importing preferences and calibrating virtual environment.”

“Do a check on control surfaces.”

“As you wish.”

The armour flares and the individual panels of the suit trigger under JARVIS’ and Toni’s control, opening up and then returning to their original position.

“Test complete. Preparing to power down and begin diagnostics,” JARVIS tells her.

Toni exhales. “Yeah, uh, tell you what… do a weather and ATC check. Start listening in on ground control.”

If JARVIS had a body, she knows he’d be scowling.

“Miss, there are still terabytes of calculations needed before an actual flight is...” he begins to protest.

“JARVIS!” Toni interjects, sternly. “Sometimes you got to run before you can walk.”

“Miss Antonia, I do not believe that is an entirely sensible premise-“

Toni ignores him. “Ready? In three, two, one.”

The repulsors in her boots and gauntlets ignite and send her flying through the indoor driveway. Finally, she torpedoes out into the night and up into the sky.

Toni screams both in exhilaration and in triumph, as the sleek line of her flight allows her to spin and loop in the air like she had wings of her own.

“Handles like a dream.”

Within two minutes, she is flying over Pacific Park, when a drive there would’ve taken her around forty-five minutes. Her HUD makes up for her myopia at this altitude and her augmented vision even allows her to see group of kids in one of the pods on the Ferris wheel, just in time for one of the boys to tilt his ice-cream cone away from him and drop his scoop of vanilla onto the floor and start screaming.

_Poor thing. You should always cry over spilt ice-cream._

She continues on her journey, heading up into the clouds

“All right, let's see what this thing can do,” Toni mutters. “What's SR-71's record?” she asks, as a wicked idea strikes her.

“The altitude record for fixed wing flight is 85,000 feet, miss,” JARVIS replies, disapprovingly.

Clearly, her darling AI has not moved past what, she imagines, he has deemed her initial ‘reckless’ decision, which means she will have hell to pay later on because JARVIS is ruthless when it comes to revenge.

Therefore, she is screwed.

“Come on, J-baby,” Toni whines. “Don’t be angry.”

“I am afraid that I am unaware of what you are referring to,” JARVIS says, primly.

Toni groans. “J, poppet, honeysuckle, light of my life, my cuddly blanket, please forgive me.”

“I may be amenable to forgiveness if you would only make your landing, Miss Antonia. I fear this is a terrible idea,” JARVIS insists, distressed.

“Gato con guantes no caza ratones,” Toni intones. “Sometimes, you have to get your hands dirty in order to get the job done right. Records are made to be broken! Come on!” she shrieks as she climbs higher and higher.

“Miss, there is a potentially fatal build-up of ice occurring,” JARVIS tells her, worriedly, as her HUD sparks with red alerts, summing up that _this is a very bad idea_.

Toni shakes her head as much as the joints in the bevor allow her to (which reminds her to fix that to allow for more movement).

“Keep going!” she pushes. “Higher!”

The ice begins to crawl over the metal of her armour, until the rigidity prevents her from even bending her arms. It ends in the repulsor in one of her boots rupturing, and finally she freezes in mid-air, some 90,000 feet in the air, before she plummets, heading straight for the ground.

The HUD shuts down, leaving her blind but for whatever she can see through the eye-slits of the armour.

“We iced up, JARVIS!” Toni exclaims, screaming. “Deploy flaps!”

No one answers her.

 _Oh, shit_.

JARVIS always answers her – not even in a fit of pique would he ignore her.

“JARVIS!” she screeches again.

She falls and falls and falls and finally, she can see the lights of the city below her. As she descends to a reasonable altitude, the ice slowly starts to peel off the armour, enough that she regains control over her extremities, most importantly her hands.

“Come on, we got to break the ice!” she shouts and twists a knob on the side of her thighs, which completely strips off the ice glued onto the titanium of her suit.

Once the ice snaps off, the HUD activates, power returning to the suit, giving Toni enough time to engage the repulsors before she hits the ground, and speeds away, dodging through incoming traffic.

She vaults into the air with a scream of triumph, bolting in the direction of her mansion. She reaches it in moments, hovering over the large structure, and lowers herself to the ground until she’s levitating over the terrace just above her living room.

She sways from side to side. “Kill power,” she instructs JARVIS.

JARVIS, perhaps because he’s particularly vindictive when she puts herself into unnecessary danger despite his strict objections, swiftly shuts down the power of the suit, without hesitation, delay or warning.

The repulsors go out and the force of her landing sends her crashing through the terrace, through the piano in her living and through the ceiling off her workshop, until she lands on the now-mangled remains of her Shelby Cobra.

DUM-E, probably because he shares his brother’s penchant for vengeance, promptly sprays her with the fire extinguisher.

She is so dropping all of them off at the fire station.

* * *

After a thorough shower, Toni returns to the workshop, clutching an ice-pack to her throbbing skull. She grabs the mug on top of the craft-papered box and drinks from it thoughtfully, before she turns around to consider the box that’s just innocently sitting on her table.

There’s a sticky note taped to the top that says _From Pepper_ , which makes her smile automatically. She peels the note off, leaving it beside the box, before tearing open the wrapping paper.

Inside is a glass case, with her old arc reactor mounted to the base with a steel rod, and the words _Proof that Toni Stark Has a Heart_ are engraved neatly on the circular rim of the reactor.

She grins.

* * *

Toni sits in front of an array of monitors that stretches around her in a circle, with an ice-pack strapped to her shoulder.

“Notes,” Toni begins in a brisk tone. “Main transducer feels sluggish at plus 40 altitude. Hull pressurization is problematic. I'm thinking icing is the probable factor.”

“A very astute observation, miss,” JARVIS comments, dryly. “Perhaps, if you intend to visit other planets, we should improve the exosystems.”

Toni snorts. “Yeah, because I have ‘space travel’ pencilled into my calendar for next Thursday.” She turns around, looking at the specs for Mark III on the monitor behind her. “Connect to the sys. co. Have it reconfigure the shell metals.” She chews on her lip. “Oh, use the gold titanium alloy from the seraphim tactical satellite. That should ensure a fuselage integrity while maintaining power-to-weight ratio. Plus, I look hot in gold. Got it?”

“Yes,” JARVIS replies, drolly. “Shall I render using proposed specifications?”

“Thrill me,” Toni says, sardonically, taking a sip of her green detox smoothie.

Toni watches the monitors as JARVIS renders the new schematic for Mark III, cast in gold, until she hears her name being spoken by the newscaster she can see on the television fixed into the wall beside the glass door to her workshop.

“ _Tonight's red-hot red carpet is right here at the Disney Concert Hall, where Toni Stark's third annual benefit for the Firefighter's Family Fund has become the place to be for L.A.'s high society_.”

Toni frowns and leans back in her chair. “Hey, J, did we get an invite for that?”

“I have no record of an invitation, Miss Antonia,” JARVIS replies, promptly, almost sounding he’s offended on her behalf.

_Bless him._

“ _... hasn't been seen in public since her bizarre and highly controversial press conference. Some claim she's suffering from posttraumatic stress and has been bedridden for weeks. Whatever the case may be, no one expects an appearance from her tonight, which is frankly a shame, considering that she never ceases to amaze on the red carpet._ ”

Toni can’t help but preen.

“The render is complete.”

Toni turns her attention back to the schematics on the monitor in front of her.

She screws up her face. “A little ostentatious, don't you think?”

“What was I thinking, miss?” JARVIS says, sarcastically. “You're usually so discreet.”

Just as Toni grabs her blender to pour more of her smoothie into her glass, she spots her Ford Flathead Roadster.

Toni bites her lips. “Tell you what. Throw a little hot-rod red in there.”

“Yes, _that_ should help you keep a low profile,” JARVIS deadpans, making Toni grin into her class.

She does love her baby’s sass.

Soon, the new render appears on the monitor, streaked with voluminous red and bright gold.

“The render is complete.”

“Hey, I like it,” Toni approves, earnestly. “Fabricate it. Paint it.”

“Commencing automated assembly. Estimated completion time is five hours.”

Toni slides to her feet.

“Tell me, JARVIS, is there anything in my closet that is appropriate for a benefit for the Firefighter's Family Fund?” she asks, curiously, finishing her smoothie.

“I believe the black Erdem you bought prior to Afghanistan has remained unworn, Miss Antonia.”

“Oh,” Toni’s eyes widen. “Totally forgot about that. Hey, let Catia know that it’s an emergency.”

“I believe the premise of having Signora Savino on retainer is such that she will be available at your disposal, but of course, I shall do as you ask.”

“Lovely,” Toni says, happily, jumping to her feet. “Stick around, guys. I’ll be back soon.”

An hour later, she is striding into the workshop in her lacy black Erdem dress and peep-toe black heels, with her rich, dark-chocolate brown hair in wispy waves over one shoulder.

“Well, what do you think?”

Toni does a little twirl in the middle of her workshop. The tailored fit of the dress and unfortunately does not flare around her as much as she would have hoped (on occasion, when she gets dressed up, she likes to feel like a Disney princess), but the lace does its best.

The bots, however, are too busy playing with a ball to pay any attention to her, much to her indignation.

“You are of no use to me at all,” Toni snaps at the bots. “I mean, why do I even keep you around, if not to tell me I look pretty?”

U rolls towards her and nudges her claw against Toni’s bare arm, chattering something that Toni takes to be _of course, you’re pretty; you really need us to validate you?_

“Of course I don’t _need_ you to validate me,” Toni scoffs. “ _But_ it would be nice to hear a compliment from you lot, once in a while. Is that too much to ask?”

DUM-E and BUTTERFINGERS, as if it only now struck them she was upset (exaggerated though it may be), cruise towards her and surround her in a circle, beeping insistently at her.

“Okay, okay,” Toni rolls her eyes. “I forgive you,” she says, extravagantly. “JARVIS, I’m surprised _you’re_ silent. You usually have an opinion on _everything_.”

“While a personal understanding of beauty, as such, was not configured within my original protocols, I have evolved to find that your intelligence, your physical characteristics, your charm and personality ensures that you are truly the most beautiful individual in my eyes, Miss Antonia. Tonight, all the more so.” JARVIS says, genuinely.

Toni melts on the inside. “Thanks, J-baby,” she says, roughly, and then clears her throat. “I’ll forgive you for being a little biased because I did write your coding. You know, this is why I say you need to get into the dating scene. Find a nice girl and have AI babies.”

“Miss Antonia,” JARVIS huffs.

“Okay, fine,” Toni rolls her eyes. “Yes, you’re committed to me, your responsibilities to me keep you way too busy for a social life. I’ve heard it all. Hey, what about Ms Dewey? I bet she’s available. I could always talk to Bill, maybe set you guys up on a date…” she says, suggestively.

“Miss Antonia, if you are in fact inclined towards attending the charity benefit tonight, I would suggest that you make haste, as it were.”

Toni sniffs. “Well, I know when I’m not wanted,” she says, haughtily.

“As always, Miss, have a lovely evening,” JARVIS replies, wryly.

“Smartass,” Toni mutters under her breath, as she makes her way out of the workshop.

* * *

When Toni climbs out of her Audi R8 after having inadvertently flouted a number of traffic laws, she throws her keys into the open, cupped palms of the valet in a red vest, waiting for her patiently beside the car.

She shoots him a wide, toothy smile that has him shyly looking at his feet. She rounds the car, making her way to the entrance of the concert hall across the damp road.

People who spot her entrance start to scream with joy, crowding her immediately, the cameras flashing in her eyes, but it fails to bring a smile, even a fake one (as was her usual trick), to her face.

She passes by a Botox Barbie who smooths a hand down her bare arm, fluttering her eyelashes at her.

“Hey, Toni, remember me?” she purrs in an attempt to garner an invitation back to her mansion.

“Nope,” Toni says, dismissively, drawing a look of offence onto her pretty, but-oh-so-synthetic, face.

She sees Hugh Hefner in the corner, with two beautiful blonde women at his side. She pats him on the shoulder.

“You look great, Hef,” she comments, but doesn’t stick around.

She spots Obadiah talking to a reporter, just in front of the stairs leading up to the concert hall and walks up to him.

“What's the world coming to when a gal’s got to crash her own party?” she calls out, slyly, clasping him by the shoulder.

There’s a flicker of surprise in Obadiah’s eyes before it dissolves into his trademark warm, teddy-bear grin, and he laughs.

“Look at you. You look beautiful.” He kisses her on the cheek. “Hey, what a surprise.”

She squeezes his shoulder. “Thank you. I'll see you inside.”

Obadiah touches the small of her back, stilling and making her cringe on the inside, before she forcibly stamps down the instinctual urge to tear herself from his hold.

 _It’s Obie, you simpleton_ , she curses at herself.

“Hey. Listen, take it slow, all right?” Obadiah says, gently, into her ear. “I think I got the board right where we want them.”

“You got it,” Toni beams up at him. “Just cabin fever. I'll just be a minute.”

She steps into the concert hall and bolts straight for the bar, leaning over the counter.

“Give me a Scotch. I'm starving.”

“Ms Stark?”

Toni turns around to meet the bland gaze of a middle-aged man with closely-shorn hair, standing beside her at the bar.

“Shalom.” she raises an eyebrow.

“Agent Coulson.”

Toni’s eyes widen with recognition. “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

There’s a flash of surprise in his brown eyes, most likely at the fact that she had cared to remember the frankly-tiresome name of the organisation he works for.

“God, you need a new name for that,” Toni declares, drinking a healthy gulp of her scotch, the ice grazing her lips.

She spots Pepper in the distance, dancing with one of the benefit’s guests, in that blue dress she had bought for her own birthday, on Toni’s behalf.

Toni resists the urge to smile – Pepper looks beautiful.

“Yeah, I hear that a lot,” Agent Coulson replies, swiftly. “Listen, I know this must be a trying time for you, but we need to debrief you. There's still a lot of unanswered questions, and time can be a factor with these things.”

“Do you dance, Agent Coulson?” Toni asks, suddenly, turning to him.

Agent Coulson’s brow furrows.

“If the situation calls for it,” he replies, impassively.

“Well, then, dance with me and you might just get your debrief.” Toni cocks her hip outwards.

His eyes don’t leave hers.

_Damn._

“Very well.”

“Awesome,” Toni says, cheerfully, and walks out onto the dancefloor, knowing that he’ll follow.

He wants something from her and they always follow when they want something from her – usually, it’s sex, but she supposes a debrief about her escape from a terrorist gang is just as good a reason.

She drapes an arm across his shoulders, which is surprisingly and delightfully broad, well-set and sinewy, and waits to see what he’ll do.

He doesn’t disappoint and his warm hand lands on her hip through the black lace.

For the first time, in a _long_ time, she’s interested.

But he maintains a surprising amount of distance between their bodies.

“You leavin’ room for Jesus or something?” she raises an eyebrow.

Agent Coulson’s expression flickers with humour and he pulls her in close.

They clasp hands and begin to sway with the music.

“You’re quite determined, Agent Coulson,” she hums.

“It’s my job, Ms Stark,” Agent Coulson replies.

Toni puts on a feigned pout. “Are you saying that dancing with me is your _job_? Way to make a girl feel special.”

“I sincerely apologise. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” Agent Coulson says, dryly. 

“It’s okay. I forgive you,” she teases.

It might be the light, but she thinks he’s amused by her.

“So, do you have a first name, Agent Coulson? Or did you want to keep things strictly professional?” Toni asks, curiously.

There’s almost a hint of a smile on his face. “I believe it is in _my_ best interest to keep things strictly professional, Ms Stark.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t think it would be pleasant to be your prey.”

Toni laughs. “You got me there,” she concedes. “You still haven’t told me your real name.”

“It’s Agent,” Agent Coulson replies, blithely.

Toni grins. “I like you, Agent. Do you like me?”

Playing hard to get is for children.

Agent Coulson looks at her, speculatively. “You… aren’t what I expected.”

He sounds equally flustered, intrigued and dismayed.

It’s _wonderful._

Toni bites her lip (his eyes flicker down in a fleeting gesture but she catches it nonetheless). “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Agent Coulson says, promptly.

“Well,” Toni lowers her voice and looks up at him through lidded eyes and long eyelashes. “You’ll have to tell me when you decide.”

The way Agent Coulson’s jaw clenches tells her he’s either incredibly amused by her antics, or desperately trying to resist the urge to expose to her just how much she’s thrown him off balance (in a good way, she hopes). 

“In the meantime, I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut our dance short,” she sighs, wearily, pulling away from him, not before she straightens his tie. “Next time, you might want to give a bow-tie a try.” She whispers, coyly. “Raincheck on the dance?”

“At your earliest convenience,” he promises, dutifully.

“Good,” Toni flutters her eyelashes. “I promised you a debriefing, didn’t I? And you did fulfil your end of the bargain. Why don’t you stop by my office on Tuesday? 7pm.”

Agent Coulson nods. “Sounds good.”

“Agent.” she gives him a winning smile, and turns away, spotting Pepper standing on her lonesome.

She heads for her, adding an extra swing to her hips.

She can feel his eyes on her as he watches her walk away.

_Yeah, I’ve still got it._

* * *

“Nice dress,” she comments as she approaches Pepper, who blushes and smiles at her.

“What are you even doing here?” Pepper asks her, curiously. “Why were you dancing with Agent Coulson?”

Toni shrugs. “I have my reasons,” she says, dismissively. “I hope you’re enjoying the present I got you for your birthday,” she says, slyly. “Question, is the guy currently getting you a vodka martini from the bar _also_ one of the birthday presents I got you?”

Pepper, initially surprised that Toni had bothered to remember her preferred drink order, rolls her eyes.

“He is _not_ an escort,” she hisses, sending furtive looks around them to make sure no one is listening in on their conversation.

“Who is he, then?” Toni pushes.

“His name is Brandon. He works for the Firefighter’s Family Fund,” Pepper sighs, dreamily.

“Well, enjoy,” Toni teases. “And remember, _no glove, no love_ ,” she whispers, conspiratorially.

“Shut _up_!” Pepper growls back and returns to smiling soppily at her dance partner, who is quickly approaching them.

“Have fun,” Toni sing-songs and makes her way back to the bar for one last drink before she heads home.

“Wow. Toni Stark.”

Toni looks up at the ceiling and wonders whom she pissed off in a former life to have Christine Everhart stalking her at benefits now.

 _Kolboynick_ , she sneers.

“Hi, Carol.” Toni fakes a smile.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Christine taunts.

“Carrie,” Toni guesses, deliberately getting her name wrong.

“Christine.”

Toni grimaces. “Christine.”

“That's right.” Christine narrows her eyes. “You have a lot of nerve showing up here tonight. Can I at least get a reaction from you?”

“Fatigue. I would say fatigue is my reaction,” Toni retorts.

“‘Cause I was referring to your company's involvement in this latest atrocity.”

Toni takes a deep breath, even though she’s somewhat intrigued on the inside. “Yeah. They just put my name on the invitation. I don't know what to tell you,” she shrugs off.

“I actually almost bought it, hook, line and sinker,” Christine says, disgusted.

Toni sighs. “I was out of town for a couple months, in case you didn't hear,” she points out, hoping for a little quarter from the woman (but secretly, she knows she won’t get a break from her).

Christine angrily slams down photos onto the bar counter. “Is this what you call accountability?” she demands.

Toni looks down at the pictures and grows cold inside.


	10. (x)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: violence, implied/referenced sexual assault.

“It's a town called Gulmira. Heard of it?” Christine’s mouth twists in disdain.

_“I am from a small town called Gulmira. It's actually a nice place.”_

The Gulmira in these pictures is no nice place, however.

It is a warzone with tanks and guns and weapons with her name on them (she thinks she will be haunted by the _Stark Industries_ on all of that munition until she is put in the ground) and corpses and dead animals and fuck, she wants to throw up because she was trying to fix this, she was trying to stop something like this from happening ever again, she was trying to protect all of these people (from her as well, because Afghanistan proved that she is just as dangerous to them as anyone else could be) and _she keeps fucking failing_.

She flicks through each of the photos and bites back a scream of rage when she recognises the faces in the photographs. After all, she was so sure she had killed them all.

They even have a goddamn Jericho.

“When were these taken?” Toni asks, quietly.

“Yesterday,” Christine answers, coldly.

Toni shakes her head. “I cancelled _all_ of the shipments.”

It comes off weak and flat.

She’s lost all credibility now.

“Well, clearly your company has other ideas.”

“I am _not_ my company,” Toni snaps.

_And I’ll tear down all those greedy, low-life bastards with my bare hands if that’s what it takes._

She plasters on her fake smile. “Look, I’d love to stay and chat, but you’re a raging bitch and I have heads to fucking decapitate.”

She leaves Christine at the bar and storms out of the concert hall, making her way down to Obadiah, who is still talking to the press. He sees the ice, the wrath in her eyes and quickly ushers away the remaining reporters.

“Please, do you mind?”

“Have you seen these pictures?” she demands, lowering her voice to an angry growl. “What the hell’s going on in Gulmira?”

“Toni, Toni,” Obadiah pulls her away from the crowd. “You can't afford to be this naïve,” he soothes.

Toni has the sudden urge to claw his eyes out of his skull because he always talks to her like she’s some child that needs to be appeased and mollified and frankly, she had one father and he died a long fucking time ago and she doesn’t need another one when she’s almost forty fucking years old.

“No, I was naïve _before_ ,” Toni snaps. “When they said, _here's the line; we don't cross it_ ; _this is how we do business_.” She spits out. “If we're double-dealing under the table...” Obadiah’s face changes and she swallows down the rage. “Are we?”

Obadiah stares her down and his face clears, his mouth thinning into a hard line.

Something akin to dread sinks heavily in her stomach.

_Fuck, Toni, you are such an idiot._

“Let's take a picture,” Obadiah offers, his voice nowhere near warm. “Come on. Picture time!”

The two turn to face the reporters and Obadiah wraps an arm around her bare shoulders.

She wants to vomit.

“Toni,” Obadiah sighs. “Who do you think locked you out?”

The betrayal hits her like a speeding truck and pain flares in her chest, intangible and hot.

“I was the one who filed the injunction against you. It was the only way I could protect you.”

_Bullshit. Bullshit, you traitorous fucking-_

He leaves her standing there, on the edge of the staircase, and makes his way to his car.

Her fists clench.

She’s been too kind, too merciful, too complacent.

They’ve forgotten the wolf beating inside her.

* * *

Toni sits in front of the TV mounted on her workshop wall, screwing in one of the loose connections in her now-hot-rod-red gauntlet.

“ _No. No. The fifteen-mile hike to the outskirts of Gulmira can only be described as a descent into hell, into a modern-day Heart of Darkness. Simple farmers and herders from peaceful villages have been driven from their homes, displaced from their lands by warlords emboldened by a new-found power. Villagers have been forced to take shelter in whatever crude dwellings they can find in the ruins of other villages_ …”

She flexes her fingers and wrist over and over again, both to test the flexibility of the gauntlet as well as to bridle at least some of her rage.

Unbeknownst to her, the gauntlet’s systems register the tension in her hand, now clenched into a fist, as an order to trigger the repulsor, which pulses white-hot.

The words roll into her; she swallows all of the rage and injustice and buries it into her bones, where it will do the most good when she can take her anger out on these fuckers.

She takes a deep breath and loosens her fingers, and the repulsor, in response, snuffs out slowly.

“ _…or here in the remnants of an old Soviet smelting plant. Recent violence has been attributed to a group of foreign fighters referred to by locals as the Ten Rings._ ”

She sees him, then, on the screen, the man who held a red-hot piece of coal against Yinsen’s eyes and threatened to burn it right out of the socket, unless she did as he asked.

She thought she killed him, but he doesn’t have a single scratch on him.

She’ll change that.

“ _As you can see, these men are heavily armed and on a mission. A mission that could prove fatal to anyone who stands in their way.”_

She slides to her feet, throwing her screwdriver down on the counter beside the sink and coffee machine.

 _“With no political will or international pressure, there's very little hope for these refugees._ _Around me, a woman begging for news on her husband, who was kidnapped by insurgents, either forced to join their militia..._ ”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the footage of a crying woman, and she wonders if Yinsen’s wife had cried for him when the Ten Rings took him from his family.

Or were his family already dead at that point?

The rage burns hot in her chest and without a moment’s hesitation, she raises her gauntleted hand. The repulsor ignites with a shrill hiss and fires. The force knocks her hand back a full 180°, as well as blowing out a few fluorescent tube lights mounted on the ceiling, which fall and shower that corner of her workshop with glass and sparks of electric current.

She cocks her head.

_Interesting._

She turns and aims the repulsor at the glass window right in front of her and fires. The glass turns into dust. The adrenaline gets to her and she fires successively at the two other glass panes, sending broken glass spilling onto the floor.

She stares at the gauntlet and pulls her fingers tight into a fist.

She had only ever intended the repulsors to be flight stabilisers, at best.

_But they have offensive capabilities._

Now, the possibilities are endless.

* * *

She flies to Gulmira after JARVIS, the bots and various other machinery she had already built clothe her in the armour. She lands, dramatically, one knee on the ground, while the other leg squats with the heel down, her arms outstretched behind her, the repulsors still thundering until they fade away.

There’s a man standing over another, beaten to hell, the barrel of his assault rifle poised to take a shot right against his skull.

 _Like hell_ , she thinks, viciously.

He shoots at her, once she climbs to her feet, but she takes a step forward and launches an uppercut to his stomach (the way that Aunt Peggy and Ana had taught her; she is a woman made from the feats of a lionised field operative, an unassuming Hungarian-born, Russian-forged ex-assassin, and a fabled geneticist, the first of the few women in their game, and it shows), which sends him flying. She’s already turning before he makes contact, but she hears him hit a stone wall and she knows there’s no way he could survive a collision at that velocity.

And it will be a painful death.

Her repulsors rumble shrilly and she strikes each and every Ten Rings’ member she can catch her in eyeline, until she swings around, and she is forced to power down the gauntlets, because there are men shouting at her in Arabic with their assault rifles pointed at women and children and _babies._

_Fucking savages._

Her arms fall to her sides.

The villagers sob, the mothers cradling their children like shields.

_Is this what Yinsen and his wife did when these men shoved guns in her childrens’ faces?_

Her mother would have; her father, no matter her resentment towards him, would have as well.

The repulsors power down.

The silence rings in the air and if it’s possible, the villagers cry and tremble harder.

Her HUD centres in on each of the terrorists. The projectile launchers in her armour’s shoulders disengage and fire multiple small-calibre barrels into her targets. The thugs collapse, dead, to the ground, leaving the villagers they had just been threatening, still cowering on their feet.

The launchers secure themselves back inside her armour, just as one of the young boys breaks away from her mother, despite her vehement protests, screaming _papa_ , and runs straight for his father, still kneeling on the ground from where she flung away his assailant. The father catches his son in his arms, their faces streaked with dirt and soot. The father clutches at his son, whispering something that Toni doesn’t understand, but she doesn’t need to, because the way that the son curls into his father’s shoulders says enough.

The boy looks at her curiously as she strides past.

“JARVIS, is there anyone left?” she asks.

“I detect a heat signature behind the stone wall to your left, Miss Antonia,” JARVIS replies, swiftly. “I have identified the target as male, and he is currently operating his satellite telephone.”

“Thanks, babe.”

Her fist slams through the wall, just beside where her sensors can detect his head is located on the other side. She wraps that hand around his head and pulls him bodily through the stone wall, which crumbles under the force of her haul.

She flings him onto the ground, upon which he starts to groan and cower, dazed from the throw.

_This one laughed as they drowned and molested me._

The urge to kill him herself is undeniable and overwhelming, but the villagers begin to surround him and she decides that his justice will be better served if it comes from these people he terrorised because he thought he was stronger and smarter and more powerful than them.

She activates her repulsors, lifting off into the air.

“He’s all yours,” she growls and launches herself into the air.

* * *

She’s soaring through the Hindu Kush, over Mir Samir, when her HUD picks out the metaphorical footprints of one of her Jericho missiles.

Just as she shoots towards it with sharp clarity, she is knocked out of the air by what she assumes is a missile and lands down in a crater of her own making in a deserted province in the mountains.

She climbs out and waits as a tank rolls towards her and launches a missile at her, which she twists out of the way to avoid. In response, the rocket launcher mounted in her right forearm distends from her armour and hurls a projectile back at the tank.

It hits the tank with a sharp clink and Toni turns and walks away, while it blows up behind her. She is immediately faced with another squadron of the Ten Rings’ men, who shoot at her armour to no avail.

She takes off into the air, and her targeting system centres on the Jericho missile she imagines the men were protecting. The repulsor ignites and hits the Jericho, which explodes and sends a haze of fire sprawling that destroys everything in its path, including the men.

_And that’s how you do it._

* * *

In hindsight, she probably should’ve avoided a route through airspace that the US Air Force could monitor, because _HONEYBEAR_ is flashing across her HUD as an incoming call, accompanied by a shrill ring (at least she knows her long-range communication systems work as she had originally intended).

_Shit._

“Hello?” she sing-songs.

“ _Toni?_ ”

“Who’s this?” she asks, deliberately being obtuse, even though she can see the assigned photo to his contact on her interface.

“ _It's Rhodes_.”

“Sorry, hello?”

“ _I said it's Rhodes_.”

“Speak up, please.”

“ _What in the hell is that noise?_ ” Rhodey demands.

“Oh, yeah, I'm driving with the top down,” she tells him, sweetly.

“ _Yeah, well, I need your help right now_.”

“It's funny how that works, huh?” Toni says, just a little snidely, because she’s still not quite over the way he treated her when she visited him at Edwards Air Force base.

“ _Yeah. Speaking of funny, we've got a weapons depot that was just blown up a few klicks from where you were being held captive_.”

_Shit. Shit. Shit._

“Well, that _is_ a hot spot,” Toni offers. “Sounds like someone stepped in and did your job for you, huh?”

There’s just the slightest bit of self-satisfaction to her tone.

“ _Why do you sound out of breath, Toni?_ ” Rhodey asks, suspiciously.

“I'm not,” Toni denies immediately. “I was just jogging in the canyon.”

“ _I thought you were driving_ ,” Rhodey points out, backing her into a corner.

“Right,” Toni says, quickly. “I was driving to the canyon, where I'm going to jog.”

“ _You sure you don't have any tech in that area I should know about?_ ”

“ _Nope!_ ”

“ _Bogey spotted!_ ” Toni hears in the background.

_Oh, fuck my life._

“ _Whiplash, come in hot_.”

“ _Okay, good, 'cause I'm staring at one right now, and it's about to be blown to kingdom come_ ,” Rhodey taunts.

Just as he says that, JARVIS alerts her to the two F-22 Raptors on her tail, his words appear on her HUD like a text message.

 _Miss Antonia, I believe we may have some unwanted company_.

_Yeah, you’re kind of stating the obvious right now, J._

“That's my exit,” Toni tells Rhodey just as she swerves out of the way of the Raptors.

Much to her annoyance, they curve smoothly onto her tail.

“Hit it,” Toni instructs JARVIS.

The propulsion systems kick in and with a boom, she bursts ahead, pushing in front of the jets at supersonic speed.

“Inbound missile,” JARVIS tells her, worriedly.

“Flares!” Toni shouts, almost desperately.

The flares deploy from her hips and come into contact with the missile, the resulting fireball sending her flying involuntarily. She starts to drop before her flight systems reactivate and launches upwards, even though the jets are hard on her heels. They begin to fire at her without hesitation, and Toni jolts as a few of the shells actually make contact with her armour.

“Deploy flaps!” she orders.

The air brake flaps in her shoulder pop out and reduce her speed to zero, just in time for the jets to go zooming past her. She does it slow and stealthy, but she finally manages to attach herself to the belly of one of the fighter jets, hoping that she might actually be able to escape this.

In any case, she puts a call through to Rhodey.

“ _Hello?_ ” he says, grimly.

“ _Hi, Rhodey, it’s me,_ ” she pants.

Sometimes (and she thinks it’s mostly because of the adrenaline rush she is slightly addicted to), she forgets that she is now, after Afghanistan, only running with, at best, 40% of her original cardiovascular system – she has definitely seen better days.

“ _It's who?_ ” Rhodey retorts.

“ _I'm sorry, it is me_. _You asked. What you were asking about is me_ ,” she confesses, quickly.

“ _No, see, this isn't a game. You do not send civilian equipment into my active war zone. You understand that?_ ” Rhodey snaps.

“This is not a piece of equipment,” Toni grits out because her lungs are on fire and she’s pretty sure she has contusions in her shoulder from where those rounds from the cannons mounted on top of the jets made contact. “I'm in it. It's a suit. It's me!” she exclaims.

Rhodey makes a noise of surprise on the other end but doesn’t say anything else.

Suddenly, the jet she is stuck to starts to roll around.

 _I believe they have found you, Miss Antonia_ , JARVIS’ warning flashes on the screen.

 _Really? I hadn’t guessed_.

Toni wheezes as she’s thrown around from the spiralling of the jet, barely able to hold onto the aircraft. She shrieks with dismay and dread as she’s finally dislodged and is flung backwards, upon which she hits the jet behind her, splintering off one of its wings with the force of the collision.

When she finally decelerates, she watches as the pilot of the jet she just hit manages to eject himself out of the aircraft before it goes down in a billow of fire, dust and ash. With a sinking stomach, she sees him falling and falling and falling, but his parachute doesn’t seem to emerge like a beige cloud that could save him.

 _Oh, you have got to be kidding me_.

She lunges forward, dropping down in an arch towards the falling pilot.

“Miss Antonia, you've been reengaged. Shall I engage execute evasive manoeuvres?” JARVIS asks, worriedly.

“Just keep going,” Toni grunts as she presses down. “I might as well save him.”

“But, miss, the other F-22 Raptor is right on your heels,” JARVIS protests. “The pilot’s death would be tragic, yes, but my protocols are to ensure _your_ safety.” 

“JARVIS, while I appreciate your concern, keep going,” she grits out against the pain in her chest cavity.

She stretches out her arm and finally, she manages to get a good grip on the drogue chute and pulls sharply. It activates the mechanism and the parachute deploys, launching the pilot into the air before he can hit the ground.

Toni, hoping for the Air Force’s preoccupation, hurtles away as soon as possible.

“ _Toni, you still there?_ ”

“Hey, thanks,” Toni wheezes.

“ _Oh, my God, you crazy bitch_ ,” Rhodey just about laughs. “ _You owe me a plane. You know that, right?_ ”

Toni starts giggling helplessly (she thinks the adrenaline is wearing off). “Yeah, well, technically, he hit me,” she points out. “So, now are you going to come by and see what I'm working on?” she asks, hopefully.

“ _No, no, no, no, no, no, the less I know, the better_ ,” Rhodey says, immediately, but she can tell he’s not very happy about it. “ _Now, what am I supposed to tell the press?_ ” he demands.

“Uh, training exercise,” Toni offers. “Isn't that the usual BS?” she teases.

“ _It's not that simple_ ,” Rhodey grumbles.

* * *

“ _An unfortunate training exercise involving an F-22 Raptor occurred yesterday. I am pleased to report that the pilot was not injured. As for the unexpected turn of events on the ground in Gulmira, it is still unclear who or what intervened, but I can assure you that the United States government was not involved_.”

“Hey!” Toni snaps as her clothing apparatus get a little too handsy getting the armour plating off. “Ow!”

“It is a tight fit, miss,” JARVIS reproaches.

There are a million inappropriate remarks on the tip of her tongue, beginning with _that’s what she said_ , but somehow, she manages to keep her mouth shut. Instead, she grimaces and can’t help but fidget – it isn’t the most comfortable process in the world to remove titanium armour that’s seen better days off your bruised and frankly aching body.

“Miss Antonia, the more you struggle, the more this is going to hurt,” JARVIS chides, controlling the mechanism which is continuing to attempt to pull off bits of the suit with various claws and appendages.

“Be gentle. This is my first time,” Toni growls, as a particular pincer pokes her in a soft spot. “I designed this to come off, so... Hey. Ouch, that hurts! I really should be able to...”

“Please, try not to move, miss,” JARVIS sighs, long-sufferingly. “I fear this mechanism will do more damage to you than actually fulfilling its purpose.”

“What's going on here?”

Toni turns around to see Pepper standing in the middle of her workshop, among the shards of glass from her door panels that she had forgotten to clean up before setting off to Gulmira. Her face is pale with shock and anger and distress.

_Oh, fuck._

“Let's face it. This is not the worst thing you've caught me doing,” Toni points out, quickly, biting her lower lip.

But Pepper’s eyes are fixed on the cracks and chips in her armour and she looks so confused and helpless and distraught that her hands are shaking hard at her sides.

“Are those bullet holes?” Pepper breaths, incredulously.

* * *

A long shower and a tiresome explanation later, Toni is waiting for Pepper in her workshop, now in just a simple long-sleeved, boat-necked black top and leggings, her still-damp, slightly curly hair pulled back in a mid-height ponytail.

Pepper walks into her workshop, her hands braced on her hips, a hesitant look on her face as if she’s afraid of what Toni will say to her.

“Hey,” she greets gently (the explanation hadn’t been easy for either of them. “You busy? You mind if I send you on an errand?” she asks.

Pepper’s mouth twitches like she wants to say something, but she remains silent.

“I need you to go to my office. You're going to hack into the mainframe and you're going to retrieve all the recent shipping manifests. This is a lock chip.” She hands Pepper a USB. “This'll get you in. It's probably under Executive Files. If not, they put it on a ghost drive, in which case you need to look for the lowest numeric heading.”

“And what do you plan to do with this information if I bring it back here?” Pepper asks, quietly.

“Same drill. They've been dealing under the table, and I'm going to stop them. I'm going to find my weapons and destroy them,” Toni replies, grimly.

“Toni,” Pepper begins with a humourless laugh. “You know that I would help you with anything, but I _cannot_ help you if you're going to start all of this again.”

Toni rounds on her. She very much doubts Pepper has seen her this angry before. She has always drawn lines between the two of them, and she has never wanted to touch, would never want to touch those boundaries, because she’s a paranoid bitch and she doesn’t even trust the woman who’s been her PA for the last ten years, even if Pepper is one of _her_ people. But this is beyond them; this is beyond professionalism in the workplace; _people could get hurt_ and if Pepper doesn’t have the stomach for it, she will be sad, maybe disappointed, she will grieve but she will do it herself if she has to.

“There is _nothing_ except this,” she growls. “There is _no_ art opening. There is _no_ benefit. There is _nothing_ to sign. There is the next mission and _nothing else_.”

Pepper exhales like it’s hard to breathe. “Is that so?” she whispers, hurt. “Well, then, I quit,” she snaps in return and throws down the USB onto the table, ready to storm out of her workshop.

Toni stares at her in disbelief, the words hitting her like a blow to the stomach. “You stood by my side all these years while I reaped the benefits of _destruction_ ,” she spits out. “And now that I'm trying to protect the people that I put in harm's way, you're going to walk out?” she asks, incredulously.

Pepper looks at her like she’s insane (in some ways, she suppose she is – Afghanistan made a new monster of her). “You're going to kill yourself, Toni. I'm _not_ going to be a part of it,” she stresses, desperately.

Toni sinks down in a chair, the anger, the fight bleeding out of her in an instant, because Pepper cares about her.

She remembers the woman’s red eyes when she stepped down from that plane.

Pepper cares.

“I shouldn't be alive,” Toni bites out. “Unless it was for a reason. I'm not crazy, Pepper.” She insists, roughly. “I just… I finally know what I have to do. And I know in my heart that it's right.” She shrugs, because that’s all she has to offer as an explanation.

She just hopes it’s enough.

Despite her misgivings about her (she will always have those), she wants Pepper to stay.

Pepper doesn’t disappoint and instead, she walks up and snatches up the USB sitting there on the table, staring at down at it while she shuffles it about between her fingers.

“You're all I have, too, you know,” Pepper tells her, suddenly, fiercely, and then walks out of the workshop.

Faith doesn’t come easy to her, but it comes in that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, Ana was totally part of the Red Widow program, but she escaped and started working in a hotel tailor shop, where she met Jarvis. But it was Ana (and Peggy, of course) who taught Toni how to fight. And one day, I will write a little piece for Ana and Jarvis and baby!Toni.


	11. (xi)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: non-consensual touching, sexual assault, Obadiah (yeah, that scene), explicit descriptions of cardiac arrest.

It’s been hours and Pepper hasn’t returned.

Something akin to dread sinks heavily in her stomach as she walks into her living room. 

Just then, her home phone rings and she makes her way to the sofa in front of the window, where it’s lying, and snatches it up. She looks at the display, onto to see Pepper’s contact picture on the screen.

She answers the call and holds it up to her ear.

A high-pitched whistle rings in her ear and everything inside her goes still.

“ _ Toni? _ ”

A large hand takes the phone from her.

“ _ Toni, are you there? Hello? _ ”

The same hand cups the back of her head and lays it against the back of the couch, her hand bent towards her chest in an awkward angle.

“Breathe,” Obadiah rumbles in her ear. “Easy, easy.”

He holds the slim, black capsule in front of her eyes, so she can see the weapon that felled her.

_ Auditory paralytic _ , she realises and her stomach twists in fear.

_ JARVIS _ , she wants to call out, but her mouth won’t obey her conscious thought.

It makes her want to cry.

_ JARVIS, what did he do to JARVIS? _

JARVIS would’ve protected her.

She can’t move her legs or her arms; she can’t cough; she can’t even blink.

She can’t fucking move.

God, she is such a fucking idiot.  

“You remember this one, right? It's a shame the government didn't approve it. There's so many applications for causing short-term paralysis.” 

He comes around the couch and looms over her (fuck, it’s like Ty all over again). He grips her chin (she thinks it should hurt but she doesn’t feel anything – even if it were pain, she’d give anything to feel it right now) and turns her head around the other way to face him.

He pulls out his earplugs. “Toni, when I ordered the hit on you, I worried that I was killing the golden goose.”

_ Oh, God. _

She is always so  _ stupid _ , isn’t she?

He leans down and with both hands, he rolls up the hem of her top until it’s scrunched up somewhere near her collarbone. He gives her breasts a good grope before his fingers circle the arc reactor.

Toni wishes with everything in her that she could kick his cock into his throat for that alone.

She watches in involuntary silence as he pulls out some silver little device from behind the sofa and places the flat cylindrical end against her arc reactor, which sears through the casing until he presses some sort of latch in the side.

It disconnects the arc reactor from the base plate of the casing, drawing a stunted choke of pain from her, even with the paralysis. 

“But, you see, it was just fate that you survived that.”

Obadiah twists it to the side, just a little, and when he pulls it away from her body, the arc reactor is attached to the end of it, taunting her.

“You had one last golden egg to give.”

Obadiah’s face looks monstrous in the light of the reactor. He props a hand on the sofa beside her and leans in.

God, she called him  _ Uncle Obie _ for more than half her life (there was a six-year old girl who looked up at her Uncle Obie with stars in her eyes and he just ruined  _ everything _ ).

He bought her birthday presents, gave her candy, took her out to museums, taught her how to drive, pretended to be oblivious when he caught her sneaking out of the house to go raising hell with Ty, and  _ he tried to have her fucking assassinated. _

Had he always hated her and or had she destroyed him like she destroys everything else? 

“Do you really think that just because you have an idea, it belongs to you?” Obadiah taunts, lowly. “Your father, he helped give us the atomic bomb. Now, what kind of world would it be today if he was as selfish as you?”

It takes his wrist one hard yank and the magnet completely dislodges from the casing, and Obadiah is pulling away her literal heart in his hands. 

He unfastens the arc reactor from his device and stares at it – it’s so close; all she would have to do is reach out and take it from him, but  _ she can’t move her fucking hands. _

She wants to cry. 

“Oh, it's beautiful,” he remarks. 

She goes from hurt to rage in one second flat and it’s dizzying. 

_ You monster. You fucking bastard. I trusted you. You piece of shit. _

The pain wraps around her chest like a vice and she thinks (God, she has had this thought so many times this year alone) that she may actually die now.

This will be the end of her. __

“Toni, this is your Ninth Symphony,” Obadiah murmurs, settling down on the couch beside her and draping an arm over the back. “What a masterpiece. Look at that.” 

He holds the arc reactor in front of her face, so close yet so far, almost as if he wants her to beg for it, beg for him to save her – even if she could open her mouth, even if she could speak, she thinks she would rather die than survive on  _ his _ terms.

“ _ This _ is your legacy,” Obadiah soothes. “A new generation of weapons with  _ this _ at its heart. Weapons that will help steer the world back on course, put the balance of power in our hands. The  _ right _ hands.”

All she can do is stare dully.

Obadiah chuckles as he places the arc reactor into a briefcase. “I wish you could've seen my prototype. It's not as... Well, not as conservative as yours. Too bad you had to involve Pepper in this. I would have preferred that she lived.”

_ No. No. No. _

What has she done?

_ Pepper, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. _

He just walks out, leaving her there on the couch to die, a literal hole in her chest that she can’t possibly fix until the auditory paralysis wears off.

In any case, by then, she will have gone into cardiac arrest and died, because Obadiah has done something to JARVIS who would’ve saved her by no, because there’s no one coming to get her or save her, because she’s alone here, because she’s  _ always _ been alone.

* * *

Her vision is already turning black at the edges by the time she can muster the strength and control to pull herself off the couch and stumble towards the lift. She lurches inside and sinks against the wall, not before she can press the button for the lift to go downstairs into her workshop.

Her lungs are on fire and every breath feels like a boa constrictor has wrapped itself around her warmth and refuses to let go. Her heart is thumping frantically under her skin and she barely manages to get out of the lift once it finally lands in the workshop level, holding onto the door frame for support.

She knows now that, had she gone down the stairs, she would’ve likely broken her neck.

She flings herself through the workshop door, sagging back against it until she spots her old arc reactor lying on top of the table through vision that is slowly going grey.

_ No. No. I won’t die here. I won’t. He doesn’t get to win. _

She trips and falls the very first step she takes and is forced to crawl her way to her table. Every climb further across the floor feels like a mile long and it takes everything inside her not to just turn around and die, then and there, because it doesn’t seem possible, it doesn’t seem worth it.

She has already failed, hasn’t she?

She wanted to protect all those people, the people she had carelessly let die because she was convinced she was in the right, she was innocent, but she was wrong, and she couldn’t even fix it right without screwing it up even further and she gave the keys to the fucking kingdom to some evil motherfucker who paid off fucking thugs to take her out (he couldn’t even look her in the eye and do it himself, the gutless fucking coward).

Had it been her, had she been capable of such hate and greed and jealousy, she could’ve and would’ve done it herself. But then again, her ovaries have always been stronger than most men’s balls.

_ No, I can fix this. I can stop him. Please, let me stop him. I can do better, I promise.  _

She sobs, and it comes out as a scrap, and she pulls herself along until she’s finally at her tables. But even as she pulls herself onto one of the buckets on the floor, she’s too fucking short to reach the arc reactor and inadvertently pushes it further down the table, out of her reach. She pulls and pulls at the magazine underneath it, but her limbs fall slack, and she topples to the ground, her head banging against the table.

She’s going to die here.

Oh, God, she’s going to die here.

_ I’m sorry, Yinsen. I guess I did waste my life after all. _

Just as she’s about to close her eyes and give into the burning ache in her chest and the mercy of her collapse, there’s a whirring sound and she looks up to find DUM-E holding the arc reactor case out to her.

She sobs and this time, there’s tears and it hurts because her entire torso feels like she’s still on that cot in Afghanistan and Yinsen is still scooping out her thorax like it’s playdoh.

DUM-E puckers his claw at her, innocently, like he can’t quite figure out what she’s doing there on the floor.

“Thanks, baby,” she rasps and then promptly breaks the glass case against the floor.

The glass shards cut into her skin and draw blood, but she doesn’t care about that. She reaches for it, her hands shaking, and grasps at the cord stretching out of it. She falters with it once before she finally manages to shove it into the casing in her chest and connect the magnet to the base plate.

It’s like being hit with lightning and she turns onto her side to spit a disgusting blend of bile and blood all over the floor beside her.

But she can breathe now. It hurts, but the pain is softening with every moment that passes.

She just can’t bring herself to move. 

JARVIS returns with a bang that echoes through the workshop.

“Miss Antonia, are you alright? Are you injured?” he demands immediately.

God, her babies.

_ I’m sorry, guys. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. _

“Miss Antonia, you are not responding to my queries. My cameras and sensors detect you are in grave distress. Please, miss, I beg you. It is of utmost importance that  _ you answer me _ !” 

JARVIS’ voice is sluggish in her ears and she can feel her eyes slowly giving into the oblivion.

“Toni!” 

Suddenly, she’s being forcibly yanked the other way by a hand on her shoulder, and she looks up with bleary eyes at Rhodey, who’s kneeling beside her and staring down at her with his face etched with vicious terror.

“Toni! You okay?”

She grips onto him with strength she didn’t think she had. If he didn’t have his jacket on, she knows she would’ve drawn blood with her nails alone.

“Where’s Pepper?” she grits out.

“She's fine. She's with five agents. They're about to arrest Obadiah.”

_ No. No. No. No. No. _

Toni shakes her head frantically but her neck spasms in protest, making her whine in pain.

“That's not going to be enough,” she insists, desperately.

Rhodey doesn’t let her climb into the armour the way she wants to as soon as she can stand on her on two feet. Instead, he forces her to down at least half a bottle of water and take a breather for five minutes, before she shoves him away and JARVIS assembles the suit around her.

“That's the coolest thing I've ever seen,” Rhodey comments in awe, as JARVIS and her armour outfitter piece it together around her.

Toni gives him a weary, proud smile. “Not bad, huh? Let's do it.”

She tests out the repulsors on the still-ruined Shelby Cobra and it staggers back.

_ Just like riding a bike. _

“You need me to do anything else?” Rhodey asks, worriedly.

“Keep the skies clear,” she orders, and the helm closes around her.

The propulsion systems engage, and she launches herself out of the mansion, crashing through brick and concrete and scaffolding until she’s soaring through the night air.

* * *

“Are you quite certain that you are well, Miss Antonia?” JARVIS asks, worriedly. “I am capable of automating the armour on my own-”

“For fuck’s sake, JARVIS, I’m fine. Stop asking!” Toni huffs.

“Well, excuse me for my concern, seeing as ten minutes have barely elapsed since you were lying on your workshop floor, dying from a cardiac arrest,” JARVIS replies, crossly.

“You can berate me  _ later _ and  _ after _ my homicidal godfather isn’t so much of an issue anymore,” she insists. “How do you think the Mark One chest piece is going to hold up?” she asks, curiously. 

“The suit’s at 48% power and falling, miss,” JARVIS laments. “That chest piece was never designed for sustained flight.” He reminds her.

_ Isn’t that the story of my life _ ?

“Keep me posted,” she says, vaguely.

For now, she’s lucky that the armour is anchored against her chest taut enough that the reactor isn’t bumping against the rest of her organs the way it did when she had it before.

There’s an incoming phone call from  _ Pepper _ , flashing on her HUD.

She answers it immediately.

“Pepper!” she exclaims, hopefully.

God, she hopes it’s Pepper on the other end.

“ _ Toni _ !” Pepper shouts with relief. “ _ Toni, are you okay? _ ” she demands.

“I'm fine. How are...”

“ _ Obadiah _ ,” Pepper cuts her off, abruptly. “ _ He's gone insane! _ ”

“Yeah, I know,” Toni dismisses, quickly. “He just tried to kill me-”

“ _ He did WHAT? Did you just he tried to kill you? _ ” Pepper shrieks. “ _ Is that why you weren’t answering your damn phone? _ ”

“Look, this is all a story for much, much later. You need to get the hell out of there.”

“ _ He built a suit _ .”

Toni pales (and it makes sense because why else would he have resorted to killing her for her arc reactor so recklessly, so stupidly, without even ensuring she was actually dead, if he wasn’t pressed for time?). 

“Pepper, get the fuck out of there, right now!” 

“ _ Where do you think you're going? _ ”

Toni’s heart starts to pound like a jackhammer, when she hears Pepper scream on the other end and a low rumble echoes through the phone call.

God, what if she doesn’t get there in time?

“ _ Your services are no longer required. _ ”

_ No. Fuck, no. _

She looms over the arc reactor building in the Stark Industries headquarters, only to find Stane (never Obie, never Obadiah again) in a giant behemoth of a suit like hers, with a six-barrelled Gatling-type gun aimed at Pepper, who is fear-struck and rooted to the spot, so small and so vulnerable compared to him.

_ Like hell he’s taking her _ , she thinks, viciously.

“Stane!” she shouts. 

When Stane looks up and sees her coming, he changes his target and shoots at her instead, but she smashes right into him, sending both of them flying through buildings and scaffolding until they’re rolling out into the middle of a busy highway.

Toni looks up, dazed, to see Stane grabbing a hold of a car filled with children and their equally-terrified mother by the fender, and lifting it up onto his shoulders.

“I love this suit!” he crows.

“Put them down, you bastard!” she shouts.

“Collateral damage, Toni,” Stane taunts, stalking forwards with the car still propped on top of him.

“Divert power to chest RT,” Toni instructs JARVIS.

The glow from her repulsors fades and crawls up her arms until her arc reactor begins to blaze with white-hot light. The force of the blast from the RT knocks Stane back onto one of the abandoned cars on the highway, leaving the car he was just holding suspended in the air before Toni catches it with her arms, making a noise of discomfort under the effort.

“Power reduced to 19%,” JARVIS tells her immediately.

She kneels and gently puts the car back down onto the ground, upon which the mother immediately shoves her foot down on the gas pedal, driving the car forwards, with Toni skidding along with them.

“Hey, I was trying to help you!” she shrieks in disbelief.

But the mother pushes on and suddenly, Toni is pulled right underneath the car.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” she shouts as she skids back down the road in a roll.

Stane charges at her and grabs a motorcycle out from underneath the driver and throws it at her, sending her flying through the air until she collides with a car and lands up, face-down, on the road. He’s looming over her in a moment, able to traverse a large distance with his giant feet, and kicks her into the bus behind them, before bodily grabbing her and hoisting her over his head.

“For thirty years, I've been holding you and your father up!” he growls and smacks her down against the ground. The flat base of his wide boot comes down and fuck, she’s now choking for breath because the titanium is being crushed around her chest.

“I built this company from nothing!”

He steps on her again, before picking her up and throwing her into the bus, which caves inwards under the force of her weight and his throw.

“Nothing is going to stand in my way,” he warns as a massive rocket launcher pops out of his shoulder panel, the laser scope trained on the bus. “Least of all you!”

“Oh, would you kindly just shut the fuck up?” Toni demands, from she’s groaning inside the crumpled remains of the bus. “Please. I mean, the cheesy evil monologuing is great and all, but no one actually gives a shit!”

Stane discharges his weapon, in response to her smart mouth, and the resulting fire blast sends her flying into the air. As she plummets back into the broiling debris on the ground, her propulsion systems kick in and she manages to hover in the air, a few feet from the ground.

“Impressive! You've upgraded your armour!” Stane roars. “I've made some upgrades of my own!”

The echo inside his metal suits makes him sound like some caricaturish cartoon villain and hysterical laughter, completely inappropriate to the situation, bubbles up inside her, because this can’t be her life, for fuck’s sake – in her defence, she’s on a highway in a metal suit being attacked by her godfather in another metal suit who, not an hour ago, tried to kill her by removing and stealing the cybernetic prosthesis in her chest that quite literally kept her alive. 

She doubts anyone, in the history of everything, has ever been in her position.

But then, Stane’s suit blasts off into the air, hurtling at a much slower speed.

“Miss Antonia, it appears that his suit can fly,” JARVIS says, slowly.

“Really? No fucking way,” Toni says, snidely.

“There is no need for scorn, miss,” JARVIS chides.

“This is no time for a lesson in good manners, J. Take me to maximum altitude,” she orders.

“With only 15% power, the odds of reaching that...”

“I  _ know _ the math!” Toni snaps. “Do it!”

Toni flings herself into the air and Stane follows, belting after her, until they’re well above the city skyline and clambering up into the clouds.

“Thirteen percent power, miss,” JARVIS tells her, worriedly.

Her chest spasms. “Climb!” she shouts.

“Eleven percent.”

“Keep going!”

“Seven percent power.”

The arc reactor beings to whine and flicker with warning.

“Oh, for God’s sake, J, just leave it on the screen. Stop telling me. You’re making my anxiety worse,” she huffs. 

Stane lunges for her boot, managing to catch up to her in his clunky heap of metal, and pulls her within his grasp, circling a giant paw around her throat until she can feel the insides of her armour protesting and threatening to pierce through her skin through the body armour.

“You had a great idea, Toni, but my suit is more advanced in every way!”

“Yeah, so, how'd you solve the icing problem?” Toni asks, without missing a beat.

“Icing problem?” Stane repeats, almost bewildered.

It’s comical (at least to her, but she’s been called a sociopath on occasion) the way the ice curls around his suit and all of the lights fade, just as he says those words.

Toni shrugs as best as she can. “Might want to look into it,” she offers and then smacks her elbow down onto the frozen metal of his helm.

He releases her without much resistance and plunges to the ground in slow-moving roll that she enjoys a little too much.

But then either because her luck runs out, or someone above absolutely  _ hates _ her, JARVIS chimes in at that moment and harshes her buzz. 

“Two percent,” he says, coldly, like he’s furious she even put herself in this position. 

Her propulsion systems and repulsors begin to sputter helplessly and she stumbles downwards, before they kick in again. 

“We are now running on emergency backup power.”

Every forty or fifty feet she dives downwards, her systems kick in and she manages to hover in the air for a grand total of five seconds before starting the vicious cycle all over again.

She lands in a very ungraceful roll and fall on top of the arc reactor building, groaning as she somehow manages to stumble to her feet.

“Connect to Pepper, J,” she instructs. “Potts!” she calls out, hurriedly, when the call goes through.

“ _ Toni _ !” Pepper exclaims in relief. “ _ Oh, my God, are you okay _ ?” she demands.

“I’m almost out of power,” Toni tells her. “I've got to get out of this thing.” She unlatches the helmet and lets it swing up to reveal her face to the night air. “I'll be right there.”

Something lands behind her with a boom and she swings around to Stane standing behind her, ominously. 

“Nice try!”

He swings at her, her helmet comes down and she ducks the blow. She aims her gauntlet at him, ready to fire a repulsor, only to realise that particular gauntlet must have come off during her landing and she is now, in fact, splaying a bare palm at Stane instead.

_ Oh, for fuck’s sake. _

Stane takes her bewilderment as an opportunity and knocks her back until she’s forced to roll her way to a stop, right at the edge of the terrace. She ducks when he tries to cuff her again and clips him where his stomach plating meets his cuisses. It’s a weak spot, so he grunts, stumbling back. She goes for his legs again and swipes his legs out from underneath him. He’s about to go down in a furious thump and just as he’s falling she launches herself into the air and drives down, clocking him in the jaw.

He seizes her arms, pinning them to her sides and manages to clumsily get to his feet, crushing her with his bulk. She struggles admirably, attempting to escape his embrace (if it can be called an embrace).

She aims a fury of kicks to his legs, attempts to knee him in the stomach and push him away with her hands to bring some space between the two of them, as Aunt Peggy and Ana taught her she should do if someone grabs her in a hold such as this one. But it does nothing to him with his feet firmly placed on the ground and her dangling in the air like he’s grabbed a kitten by the scruff of the neck.

“Weapons status?” she grits out as her back plating starts to rupture under the pressure. 

“Repulsors offline. Missiles offline.”

“For fuck’s sake, is  _ everything _ offline?” she barks. An idea occurs to her. “Flares!” she shouts.

Her armour launches a flurry of infrared flares which immediately attack Stane as the closest heat signature but for her, blinding him thoroughly and forcing him to drop her so she can put space between them and reevaluate her strategy. The air is filled with smoke, so she takes the chance and hides behind one of the walls closing in on the staircase leading into the arc reactor facility sits.

“Potts?” she hisses, hopefully, connecting through to Pepper’s phone, even though her HUD is flaring with red like mad.

“ _ Toni _ !”

“This isn't working. We're going to have to overload the reactor and blast the roof,” Toni mutters. 

“ _ Well, how are you going to do that? _ ” Pepper asks, worriedly.

“ _ You're _ going to do it. Go to the central console, open up all the circuits. When I get clear of the roof, I'll let you know. You're going to hit the master bypass button. It's going to fry everything up here.”

She runs the simulation on her HUD and the resulting blast from the reactor meltdown will be enough to take Stane down.

“ _ Okay. I'm going in now _ ,” Pepper tells her.

“Make sure you wait till I clear the roof,” she reminds her. “I'll buy you some time.” 

Just as Stane approaches the wall she’s hiding behind, Toni runs in the opposite direction, going the other way around until she’s coming up behind him and crawling on top of him like a spider monkey, wrapping her legs around him for some stability.

“This looks important!” she guesses.

She claws into the gap between his helmet and gorget and pulls out a huge chunk of wiring randomly, throwing it over her shoulder. Stane sways back and forth, stumbling around, in an attempt to dislodge her, and she can’t be swayed that easily, but he finally manages to get his hands around her helmet and throws her bodily over his shoulder until she lands on top of the circular glass skylight suspended directly above the arc reactor.

Toni looks up, awkwardly straightening out her neck in the armour.

The centre of Stane’s suit opens up, revealing him sitting inside, smug and vindictive.

_ Bastard. _


	12. (xii)

“I never had a taste for this sort of thing,” he comments, holding up the hand in which her helmet lies. 

_Yeah, you prefer paying off terrorists to get your dirty work done, you fucking coward._

“But I must admit, I'm deeply enjoying the suit!” he gloats and crushes her helmet in his meaty, metal paw.

He throws it at her and it lands in front of her, taunting her as if it is her inevitable end to go the same way as her helmet.

_No. Fuck, no. You don’t get to kill me. You don’t get to fucking win._

“You finally outdid yourself, Toni! You'd have made your father proud!” Stane crows, stalking forward.

She climbs to one knee, inwardly seething at the mention of her father (obsessive, resentful, negligent, borderline-sexist prick Howard Stark may have been, but he would never have stooped to Stane’s level – she knows that in her bones).

“ _It's ready, Tony! Get off the roof!_ ” Pepper warns her.

Stane raises one of his gauntlets and a rotary launcher fires a barrage of rockets at her. She manages to raise one of her gauntlets and a shield splits out of her forearm, protecting her from the bombardment, but the barrage shatters most of the glass in the skylight and Toni tips over the edge of the centre panel.

However, just before she can tumble through the skylight, her fingers manage to grasp the rim before she tumbles right through the roof. 

Pepper screams from below and it’s enough of a shock to her system that she manages to get her elbows on top of what’s left of the skylight. 

Stane tries again and fires all over the skylight but miraculously manages to miss her every single time. In any case, the skylight is completely shot through and all of the glass falls below, and Toni prays that Pepper escapes the shower. 

“Toni!” Pepper calls out, worriedly and Toni breathes a sigh of relief.

“How ironic, Toni!” Stane shouts, panting a little. 

Toni glowers at him.

“Trying to rid the world of weapons, you gave it its best one ever!”

Toni doesn’t dignify him with an answer. “Pepper!” she says, instead.

“And now I'm going to kill you with it!” Stane says, viciously.

The ache returns, intangible but fierce, and she still wonders if this is her fault somehow, if _she_ turned him into this. 

Even if it isn’t, she has to end this, end _him_ , or so many people will die and that will really be her fault (there are already too many corpses at her door and she doesn’t think she can stomach any more). 

He fires another rocket at her, but it veers off somewhere into the corner of the terrace and misses her by a large margin.

“You ripped out my targeting system!” Stane grumbles.

“Time to hit the button!” Toni shouts down to Pepper.

“You told me _not_ to!” Pepper protests.

“Pepper, this isn’t up for debate here,” Toni grits out, her hands slipping momentarily.

“Hold still, you little cunt!” Stane growls.

Stane raises his other gauntlet and fires another rocket, which flies over her head and lands somewhere behind her with a loud bang.

“Just do it!” Toni snaps, loudly.

Stane launches another rocket and Toni slips down until only the fingers on one hand are grasping at the rim of the skylight’s centre panel.

“You’ll die!” Pepper screams, helplessly, her voice cracking midway.

_Pepper. Pepper, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I’m making you do this. But there’s no other way._

_There’s isn’t. There isn’t._

“Push it!” Toni shouts.

Finally, Pepper does as Toni begs and slams her hand down on the master bypass button for the arc reactor, which whirls with cataclysmic energy, the electricity rolling out in waves until it all crawls upwards and bursts right through the ceiling, throwing Toni to the side, where she hits the wall and collapses in a heap.

The reactor’s energy collides with the arc reactor in Stane’s suit and he is thoroughly surged with electricity. By the end, his suit is nothing more than a crumbling mass of metal, with him inside, and he tips forward onto the skylight, managing somehow not to fall straight through.

Toni turns her head, the muscles in her neck vehemently and brutally cramping as she does so, just in time to see Stane’s eyes flicker open. 

Joy.

 _Why couldn’t he have just died?_ she thinks, bitterly. _Why do I have to go through this stupid last moments thing with the asshole who tried to kill me?_

Stane tries to unbuckle himself and get the hell out of dodge, but the metal is too mangled around for him to even move and as he does so, the framework of the skylight starts to give way underneath him.

Stane stops immediately and instead (the gall of him, she can’t believe) reaches his hand out for her to take.

The skylight starts to bend inwards and Toni revels in the fear she can see in his eyes.

_Good. He should know how it feels._

He really thinks he’s about to die.

But, fortunately for him, whatever of that five-year-old girl that’s left inside her screams in protests and she grabs a hold of his hand just before he can fall through.

Stane laughs as if he had been expecting this.

God, what she wouldn’t give to kill him with her bare hands.

“Couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Stane says, knowingly.

Toni grits her teeth. This feels too much like humiliation and she’s tempted to let him go, just to see what his face will contort into, if he’ll be utterly dumbstruck at what she is truly capable of, at the monster she is on the inside.

She wants him to die knowing that he underestimated her, and she won.

She fucking won.

“Don’t mistake it for kindness,” she growls instead.

“I’ve never mistaken anything about you since you were a kid,” Stane grunts as he tries once more to pull himself out of the suit.

They both know their current arrangement won’t last much longer.

Stane chuckles, hysterically. “Genie’s out of the bottle.”

Toni just watches him. 

 _Men are such scared, panicky things_ , she thinks, contemptuously. 

“We gave a wonderful gift to the world. We’ve done our part.”

 _God, he’s delusional_. Her lip curls with disgust.  

“Now it’s time for both of us to go.” Stane turns to her with wild, unhinged eyes.

He wraps his other arm around her wrist like he’s ready to pull her down with him.

“Fuck no,” she spits in his face and releases the latch on the gauntlet, sliding her hand out of it. 

Just as she hoped for, she sees the fear in his eyes as he falls.

It feels like vindication, like victory. 

She doesn’t even blink as Stane hits the arc reactor below in a firestorm (she _needs_ to see this; she _needs_ to see him die), and the arc reactor wells with energy, which surges upwards in a blinding shaft of light that climbs all the way to the clouds.

It knocks her back with such force that she curls inwards and blacks out. 

The last thing she does before her eyes close is smile.

She fucking won. 

* * *

When she wakes up, she’s lying in a sterile cot, staring up at a blank ceiling, and her hands start clawing at the arc reactor, the memory of the hole where the thing keeping her alive was too sharp for her to forget.

“Toni! Toni, it’s okay. You’re okay,” Rhodey hushes her, immediately, pulling her hands back to her sides. “The arc reactor’s there. You’re good.”

Toni’s voice is rough. “Where are we? What’s going on? What happened to Stane?”

“We’re in the hospital,” Rhodey soothes. “Don’t worry, I didn’t let anyone touch the arc reactor. You’ve been here for a couple of days. Stane’s… Stane’s dead.”

There’s a hard set to his features that tells her he’s in no way mourning for the man who tried to kill her twice.

She melts on the inside.

She pats his hand. “When’re you springing me out of here?” she rasps.

Rhodey chuckles. “The doctor’s got to give the go-ahead, first.”

“Doctor-shmoctor,” she dismisses, immediately. She starts attacking the wires at her wrists. “I feel good as new.” 

“Fuck, Toni, don’t do that,” Rhodey curses. “You’ll go into cardiac arrest or something.”

Toni snorts, and immediately her chest starts throbbing in protest. She winces. “Like that’s never happened before,” she jokes, weakly.

Rhodey stares down at her, unimpressed.

“Too soon?” she offers.

Rhodey shakes his head and a reluctant smile cracks open on his face. “Babe, you are one crazy bitch,” he shakes his head. “And don’t you fucking change, okay?”

He leans down and kisses her on the forehead.

“Okay,” she replies, hoarsely.

“And don’t fucking do that to me again either,” Rhodey says, sternly. “We thought you were dead.”

“We?” Toni strains her neck to see if there was anyone else in her hospital room but finds no one but Rhodey.

“Pepper,” Rhodey tells her. “You really freaked her out, you know? She was the one who found you on top of the roof. She was pretty sure you were dead until your arc reactor started sparking. So, she called me, and an ambulance, and we got you here ASAP.”

Toni sighs and leans back against her pillow which is entirely too soft to her tastes (she had slept on a wadded jumper on the floor for the first few weeks after Afghanistan and she hasn’t quite evolved from that yet). 

“I should probably give her a pay hike, huh?” she tells Rhodey.

Rhodey snorts. “Oh, please. I suggest you start making plans to build a fucking temple dedicated to that girl.”

Toni gives him a thumbs-up, and despite how much she fights it, she succumbs to the morphine again.

* * *

“‘Iron Man’?” Toni huffs. “Seriously? So sexist. And it’s not even accurate.” She complains. “The suit's a gold-titanium alloy.” She scrunches up her features. “I suppose it is kind of evocative, the imagery, anyway.” She grudgingly admits. 

_Starks are made of iron, Antonia._

Toni’s lips twitch. _Maybe they are, Dad._

Agent Coulson steps into her eyeline and hands her a thin stack of cards. “Here's your alibi,” he says, plainly.

“Right,” Toni says, slowly.

“You were on your yacht,” Agent Coulson tells her, firmly.

“Gotcha.” Toni nods.

“We have port papers that put you in Avalon all night and sworn statements from fifty of your guests.”

Toni flutters her eyelashes because she’s a terrible person and Agent Coulson is such an easy target. “Were you one of those guests, Agent?” she asks, coyly. “We could… always change it around. We could say that it was just you and me alone on the island.” 

She bites her lip in a way that she knows makes people pant, and if she squints, she can see a hint of red climbing up his neck through his suit collar.

Agent Coulson clears his throat. “That’s what happened.” He nods at the cards, pointedly.

Toni grins. “If that’s what you want. But it would’ve been a fun night,” she says, suggestively. “I can promise you that.”

Agent Coulson looks like he’s biting back a smile. “Just read it, word for word.”

Toni flicks through the cards. “There's nothing about Stane here,” she says, pointedly.

“That's being handled,” Agent Coulson explains. “He's on vacation. Small aircraft have such a poor safety record.”

 _He doesn’t deserve that. They’ll all mourn him, call him an American hero, a role model for the next generation. They won’t ever know the truth. They won’t ever know the trash he really was_ , she thinks, bitterly.

“But what about the whole cover story that it's a bodyguard? He's my...” she trails off, her shoulders slumping in discontent. “I mean, is that... That's kind of flimsy, don't you think?” she pouts.

“This isn't my first rodeo, Ms Stark,” Agent Coulson reassures her, his voice dropping to a lower register than usual.

She leans back, satisfied, a smile curving on her red mouth.

His eyes dip down to lips just for a moment, but it’s enough. 

He isn’t like the men she usually tries her skills on, visibly panting and going cross-eyed at the idea of putting their cock inside her. 

Agent Coulson doesn’t usually show her a thing, but when he does, she knows he wants her, even for the chemical release of a few orgasms alone. 

“Just stick to the official statement, and soon, this will all be behind you,” Agent Coulson tells her, sternly, his features settling into a picture of professionalism. “You've got ninety seconds.”

He moves to leave, when her voice halts him.

“Agent Coulson?” she calls him, her voice gentling. “I just wanted to say thank you very much for all of your help.” She says, sincerely.

Pepper may have died if his men and him hadn’t been there. For that alone, she will be grateful.

“That's what we do,” Agent Coulson points out. “You'll be hearing from us.”

“From the Strategic Homeland-” 

“Just call us SHIELD,” Agent Coulson cuts her off.

“Right.” Toni inclines her head.

He leaves her and Pepper alone in the anteroom, and Toni slides to her feet, cutting a dramatic pose for maximum effect.

“What do you think?” she asks, curiously, craning her neck to check herself out in the mirror.

Pepper smiles a slow, lazy smile. “I think you like him,” she says, delighted.

Toni hushes her furiously. “No, I _don’t_. And keep your voice down!” she hisses. “He might still be around here somewhere.”

Pepper raises an eyebrow. “You’re right. He must be setting up shop inside the walls,” she says, dryly.

Toni scowls. “Hey, you don’t know his super-secret spy ways. He could be inside the walls, for all you know. So, for the love of everything, keep your voice down!”

Pepper crosses her arms over her chest. “If you don’t like him, why do I need to keep my voice down?” she retorts.

Toni narrows her eyes. “Wow, you are the most frustrating assistant I have ever had.” 

“You like him,” Pepper teases.

“Shut up,” Toni mutters. “Now, tell me how pretty I look.”

Pepper groans. “Yes, Toni. You’re a goddess among us ordinary women. You should be on magazine covers even more than you are now.” 

“Well, there’s no need to classify yourself as ordinary, Pepper. You’re easily above average,” Toni says, cheerfully, smoothing her hands down her bright red suit, tucking the edge of her blazer close.

Pepper steps up and fiddles with her hair, making sure it curls appropriately over the dip of the neckline of her white blouse. “You’re always so effusive with praise, Toni. It’s one of my favourite things about you,” she says, dryly.

“If I kept complimenting you, you’d just get lazy.” Toni shoots her a wide smile. “I like to keep you on your toes.”

“There’s a bit that’s just…” Pepper trails off and motions for her to turn around.

Toni swivels and feels the tell-tale press of a bobby pin where Pepper must have seen something out of place.

“Okay, you can turn back around.”

Much to her amusement, Toni does as she says. Pepper surveys her with a meticulous eye.

Apparently, her current style fulfils Pepper’s standards and she nods.

“Let's get this show on the road,” Toni says, faux-excited.

“I’m sorry about Stane,” Pepper says, suddenly.

Toni stills. “I’m not,” she says, shortly, without missing a beat.

“Toni,” Pepper begins, knowingly. “He was your godfather.”

“And he tried to kill me, which makes the whole godfather thing pretty irrelevant, wouldn’t you say?” Toni points out.

“You cared about him. You’re allowed to mourn. You can even cry if you want,” Pepper says, quietly.

“Because I’m a woman?” Tony questions, bitterly.

“No,” Pepper’s reply is firm. “Because you’re human, Toni.” 

Toni takes a deep breath and focuses somewhere over Pepper’s shoulder, before shaking her head.

“Stane isn’t worth my tears,” Toni says decisively and steps back, snatching up the cards she had left on her seat. “You know, it's actually not that bad. Even I don't think I'm Iron Man.” She mutters. 

Pepper is still staring at her.

“That will be all, Miss Potts,” Toni says, curtly.

Pepper falters and nods, acknowledging the space that she had put in between them (Pepper knows her well enough by now not to take her words the wrong way)

Toni feels like a complete and utter bitch and she would never hurt Pepper if she could help it. But there have to be lines, or something like Stane will happen again and for all of her courage and conviction, for all of her apathy and reserve, there are only so many knives in the back even she can take. 

* * *

“And now, Ms Stark has prepared a statement. She will not be taking any questions. Thank you,” Rhodey says, sternly, to the crowd of reporters gathered below the stage.

Toni steps in front of the podium. “Been a while since I was in front of you. I figure I'll stick to the cards this time,” she jokes. 

They all laugh (but for Christine, who simply stares at her like she can see the truth of her and still finds her wanting.

“There's been speculation that I was involved in the events that occurred on the freeway and the rooftop...”

“I'm sorry, Ms Stark,” Christine, as expected, cuts her off. “But do you honestly expect us to believe that was a bodyguard in a suit that conveniently appeared, despite the fact that you-”

Toni narrows her eyes. “I know that it's confusing. It is one thing to question the official story, and another thing entirely to make wild accusations, or insinuate that I'm a superhero.”

Christine smiles. “I never said you were a superhero,” she retorts.

“Of course you didn’t.” _God, I hate you, Christine. And you were lousy in bed_. “I think the actual hero-ing is much better suited to those who put their lives on the line to keep us safe every minute of every day, wouldn’t you say?”

She turns it back on Christine, who now looks like an idiot for questioning her in the middle of her press conference.

 _See, this is what you get when you don’t wait your turn_ , she thinks, spitefully.

“Frankly, I would most likely make a poor superhero. My robots already say I’m too much of a workaholic. I can’t imagine the hell I’d get if I became a superhero.” 

The press laugh again. She doesn’t know if she’s actually funny or if they’re so afraid of her that they laugh anyway.

“And I mean, isn’t it a little masculinist, androcentric, misogynistic, heteronormative to assume that it’s an Iron _Man_. Why are we so quick to assume this is a man? Or are we so terrified by the possibility of women displaying any kind of physical power that we have to perpetuate this phallocentric world view?” 

Toni just has to drive her point right in. Much to her delight, there are a number of men in her audience who are looking away awkwardly and much to her disappointment, not enough women agreeing with what she is saying.

“Just stick to the cards, babe,” Rhodey murmurs in her ear.

“Hm? Yeah, okay. Yeah,” Toni clears her throat and looks down at the cards. “The truth is-”

She opens her mouth and the words she’s expected to say don’t come out.

_Oh, fuck it._

“I am Iron Woman.”

The reporters scream.

* * *

That night, when she comes home, the bots are playing by themselves in the lounge and she trusts that JARVIS was keeping a close eye on all of them.

She pets them individually, smiling when they all lean into her touch.

“Anything I should know?” Toni asks JARVIS.

“I found your press conference truly exhilarating, Miss Antonia,” JARVIS drawls.

“Thanks, J-babe. It’s always good to meet a fan.”

“If I may ask, why Iron Woman?”

“Why _not_ Iron Woman?” Toni challenges.

“There are many epithets you could have exchanged for _woman_ ,” JARVIS points out.

“But why would I do that?” Toni asks, confused. “Changing my name from Iron Woman to something like Iron Queen or Iron Goddess just implies that there’s something lacking about _woman_ , like it’s _less_ worthy or _less_ fierce. _Woman_ is always worthy; _woman_ is always fierce.” 

If JARVIS had an interface, she would bet her entire fortune that he would be giving her that _I’m so proud of you for fucking up the patriarchy_ smile (the first Jarvis had the same smile, after all).

“As you will, Miss Antonia,” he returns, reasonably. “Oh, it might interest you to know that my new security protocols to desist intruders from entering our home have been successfully executed.”

“Vultures?” Toni guesses, sympathetically.

JARVIS pauses. “Something along those lines, yes.”

“Did you kill someone? Do I need to bail you out of jail or something?”

“I would never allow myself to be caught in a position that would warrant an arrest, Miss Antonia,” JARVIS says, almost affronted by her assumption. “I thought it prudent to inform you that the rewriting to and debugging of my code is functional and works as we had intended.”

Both she and JARVIS never want her to be put in a position where someone could force their way into her home and attack her the way Stane did. 

JARVIS would never allow it, and now, he won’t.

Ten minutes later, she’s barely settled on the couch with a glass of wine, watching the latest episode of Real Housewives of Orange County, when her doorbell rings.

Toni pauses. “JARVIS?” she calls out.

“I have no significant objections to you opening the front door, Miss Antonia. And I will be on standby if my interference is required,” JARVIS reassures. 

Toni frowns. “Who is it?”

“I would not want to spoil the surprise.”

Toni huffs. “You’re getting way too mouthy, you know.”

“I am, after all, built in your image,” JARVIS drawls.

She opens the door to Agent Coulson standing in on her front porch, with an intimidating dark-skinned, middle-aged man with an eyepatch and a trench coat looming next to him.

“A house call, Agent Coulson?” Toni teases, cocking her hip outwards. “How forward of you.”

Agent Coulson returns her stare, blankly.

_Shame. But I think that’s his boss behind him, so I’ll give him a chance to make it up to me._

“I’m afraid this isn’t a social call, Ms Stark,” he replies.

“Oh, well, you’re always welcome to stay, if you’d like.” Toni winks, boldly, and turns to the other man. “Not you, though. I don’t even know you. Why would I ask you to stay? So, basically, who are you and why are you on my doorstep?”

“Nick Fury. Director of SHIELD,” he replies, nonchalantly. “We tried to speak with you earlier but-”

Toni cuts him off. “Let me guess,” she says, slyly. “You tried to disable my AI, so you could sneak in, but JARVIS had a few sneaky, violent surprises up his high-tech sleeve?”

“If I were programmed with violent tendencies, Miss Antonia, I believe you are ultimately responsible. I cannot be held responsible,” JARVIS chimes in, primly. “Furthermore, under sections 197 of the California Penal Code, it is within our purview to defend our habitation against one who manifestly intends or endeavours, by violence or surprise, to commit a felony, or against one who manifestly intends and endeavours, in a violent, riotous or tumultuous manner, to enter our habitation of another for the purpose of offering violence you. In addition, under section 198.5, my use of force, intended or likely to cause death or great bodily injury within our residence shall be presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily injury to us when that force is used against another person, not a member of the family or household, who unlawfully and forcibly enters or has unlawfully and forcibly entered the residence, as I knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible entry occurred.”

“I’d apologise for him, but it’s not really his fault. He’s just uber-protective after the whole Stane thing. He doesn’t like to be helpless if I could possibly be in danger.” Toni shrugs. “So, in future, don’t break into my house, dude. You want something, you knock on the door, you call, you make an appointment with my PA, you contact me like a normal person. Got it? Now, what do you want?” she asks Fury.

“I'm here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative.”

“The Avengers Initiative?” Toni raises an eyebrow.

“An idea to bring together the most capable individuals to defend our world from imminent global threats, threats too great for the forces of mankind to handle,” Fury tells her, stoically.

She imagines he expected a much grander reaction than the raised eyebrow she gives him. 

“I’m sorry, you want me to join some super-secret superhero Breakfast Club?”

Fury very much looks like he’d much rather be pitching her off a cliff than having this conversation with her, but he nods nonetheless.

Toni narrows her eyes.

“No.”

And she promptly shuts the door.

She opens the door again to find Fury glaring at her, while Agent Coulson looks very much like he’s praying for deliverance (from her or his boss, she doesn’t quite know).

“Oh, and like, get off my property. I would think that were self-explanatory, but clearly not because you’re still standing on my doorstep. So, yeah, get off my property.”

She slams the door in Fury’s superior face.


End file.
